PedsAcademy accounts for the patient’s diagnosis and treatment to make lesson plans interesting and doable.
Megan Nickels recalls the scene in the hospital room. It was “pure chaos.” The TV was blaring. Siblings were crowded in one corner loudly playing with toys. The patient’s mother was attempting to carry on a difficult phone conversation above the din. Doctors and nurses shuttled in and out of the room to check vitals and administer shots. In the middle of it all sat the patient—a 14-year-old girl who recently had a brain tumor removed. She was nauseous from the medication and crying.
And there stood Nickels. It was her first day as a volunteer teacher at OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria. “I was holding this thick packet of worksheets—it must’ve been about 50 pages of equivalent fraction problems,” says Nickels, Ph.D., founder and faculty director of PedsAcademy at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Florida. “In that moment, the ridiculousness of trying to engage this child in this work really just hit me. This was not going to be easy or even viable.”
Not surprisingly, the young girl wanted no part of that stack of homework. It was a theme that repeated itself all day long—patient after patient. Determined to reach these kids, Nickels returned to the hospital the next day. But this time without the huge homework packets. Instead, she brought educational toys and found success. That young girl even agreed to build a robot with Nickels.
“From there, I started researching specifically about children with various cancers and how I could address their needs,” Nickels says. “I knew then that this would be my life’s work.”
Megan Nickels recalls the scene in the hospital room. It was “pure chaos.” The TV was blaring. Siblings were crowded in one corner loudly playing with toys. The patient’s mother was attempting to carry on a difficult phone conversation above the din. Doctors and nurses shuttled in and out of the room to check vitals and administer shots. In the middle of it all sat the patient—a 14-year-old girl who recently had a brain tumor removed. She was nauseous from the medication and crying.
And there stood Nickels. It was her first day as a volunteer teacher at OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria. “I was holding this thick packet of worksheets—it must’ve been about 50 pages of equivalent fraction problems,” says Nickels, Ph.D., founder and faculty director of PedsAcademy at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Florida. “In that moment, the ridiculousness of trying to engage this child in this work really just hit me. This was not going to be easy or even viable.”
Not surprisingly, the young girl wanted no part of that stack of homework. It was a theme that repeated itself all day long—patient after patient. Determined to reach these kids, Nickels returned to the hospital the next day. But this time without the huge homework packets. Instead, she brought educational toys and found success. That young girl even agreed to build a robot with Nickels.
“From there, I started researching specifically about children with various cancers and how I could address their needs,” Nickels says. “I knew then that this would be my life’s work.”
Posts
0 Comments