Erika Shue, a trainer at UC San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital, and considered one of her college students, Elizabeth Madole, 8.

Erika Shue, a trainer at UC San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital, and considered one of her college students, Elizabeth Madole, 8.
Elizabeth Madole, 8, is a common at UC San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco. At least as soon as a month, she and her household trek from Redding so she will get transfusions to deal with a uncommon neuromuscular dysfunction.
It may be a painful, troublesome time. But amid the IV tubes and machines, there is one shiny spot: Miss Erika.
“We read ‘Narwhal and Jelly’ books. We do art. I like doing math, too,” Elizabeth stated. “She’s just a fun teacher. … What I like best is that she loves me.”
Miss Erika — also referred to as Erika Shue — teaches in considered one of California’s most uncommon public faculties: the Marie Wattis School, a TK-12 faculty that exists inside the partitions of UCSF.
With an enrollment of about 80 college students, the Wattis School serves kids from all through California and past who’re grappling with severe well being circumstances resembling most cancers, spina bifida or cystic fibrosis — however who additionally need a “normal” faculty expertise. Students be taught geometry and historical past, do poetry slams and rejoice graduations, and even have a promenade.
In a world the place virtually nothing resembles a regular childhood, the Wattis School supplies construction, a connection to friends each out and in of the hospital, and maybe most essential, hope.
“The message that students get is: School is important, we think you’re going to get better, your life will go on and you will need to learn algebra,” stated Julie Pollman, the college’s head trainer and considered one of its founders. “In that way, school becomes part of the healing process.”
Many massive kids’s hospitals supply education companies, however UCSF’s, based in 1992, was among the many first and has served as a mannequin for different in-patient amenities. It’s distinctive in that it’s a part of San Francisco Unified. Of the college’s 11 academics, 4 work for the district and 7 are funded by personal donors.

Courtesy Stephanie Madole
Elizabeth Madole, 8, reveals her art work that was revealed in a UCSF journal.
As medical expertise improves and extra kids are surviving circumstances that after might need been deadly, extra kids’s hospitals are providing or increasing education companies Julie Pollman — an effort to make kids’s transitions again to common faculty as seamless as doable.
But there’s a broad vary of what hospitals supply. Some kids’s hospitals, like UCSF, are affiliated with faculty districts. They have school rooms, 1-to-1 bedside instruction, visits from science museums, room for siblings and shut contact with the kids’s common academics. Others have extra casual preparations, resembling tutors who assist with homework assigned by the common faculty. And some, particularly these which are underfunded or in distant places, supply little or no education for his or her sufferers.
The Hospital Educator and Academic Liaison Association, a nonprofit group representing hospital-based academics, is advocating for extra hospitals to spend money on faculty companies for youngsters, and for credential packages to practice academics within the particular artwork of training kids with severe well being circumstances.
And it is an artwork. Only about 35% of the kids at UCSF have individualized education plans or 504s, that means that they’re enrolled in particular education, however they may tire simply, or turn into pissed off or depressed, or simply have off days. A very good trainer is aware of when to push the kid and when to put the textbook down for a whereas.
Teachers on the Wattis School examine kids’s medical charts and discuss to docs and households, making an effort to perceive what particular challenges a little one could be dealing with on a specific day.
“Our teachers are part surrogate parent, chaplain, confidante. They know how to be good listeners, how to read body language and take the long view,” Pollman stated. “You never know what kind of day your student is having, what news they just received. It might be time to celebrate, or it might be time to exert some sensitivity and put the algebra away for now.”
In some instances, schoolwork and time with academics may really assist kids get well, stated Jodi Krause, a board member of the affiliation and mind harm education coordinator at Children’s Hospital Colorado. With mind accidents, for instance, tutorial challenges and 1-on-1 time with academics can play a function in rehabilitation. And the social advantages of faculty can enhance a little one’s psychological well being total, main to simpler hospital stays.
“A kid’s job is to be in school,” Krause stated. “And we haven’t done our job if we haven’t prepared them for how they’re going to be spending their time after they’re discharged.”
Schools inside hospitals have one other profit: they scale back absenteeism. Students who’re studying even once they can’t bodily attend their common faculty have larger attendance charges total and do higher academically in the long term, Krause stated.
At UCSF, college students may be enrolled for simply a few days for one-time procedures or, if they’ve continual circumstances, for years. Some even graduate from the Wattis School and go on to school. They come from all through California and abroad, drawn to the hospital’s cutting-edge trials and analysis.
Elizabeth, who’ll begin third grade this fall, has been a common customer to UCSF for years. Diagnosed with a neuromuscular illness referred to as generalized myasthenia gravis in addition to an autoimmune inflammatory dysfunction, Elizabeth visits UCSF at the least as soon as a month for infusions of antibodies and different therapies.
Her mom, Stephanie Madole, stated that Elizabeth loves her trainer a lot she really appears ahead to the lengthy drive from Redding and the times hooked to IV drips.
“The school is phenomenal,” Madole stated. “It allows her not just to continue her education, but it gives her a sense that the hospital is a home-away-from-home. The teachers care so deeply about the kids. … I don’t have the words to describe the positive impact it’s had on Elizabeth.”
Thanks to the eye she will get from Shue, Elizabeth is even a little forward of her friends at her common faculty. For kids who’re out and in of hospitals, that’s not often the case. Shue permits Elizabeth’s youthful sister, Charlotte, in addition to Gracie, considered one of Elizabeth’s pals from dwelling, to be a part of within the classes nearly.
“The gratitude we feel is immense,” Madole stated. “Elizabeth truly feels loved.”
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