The teachers from WA’s ‘School of Special Educational Needs: Medical and Mental Health’ helping sick kids

After countless operations and missing months of school, Year 10 student Kate Wagner could have easily fallen behind her classmates. But with the help of dedicated teachers based at Perth Children’s Hospital, she’s on track to chase her dream of a career in medicine. The 15-year-old — who has had 11 neurosurgical procedures — is one of around 450 WA students battling serious illness to get support each week from the School of Special Educational Needs: Medical and Mental Health. Teams of passionate teachers and support staff help sick kids across the State keep up their zest for learning — as well as supplying a welcome dose of normality — until they are well enough to return to their own school. Kate’s mum Jo Wagner says all her teachers have been “absolutely amazing”. “They’re more than just exceptional teachers, because they’re dealing with kids who have such varying needs and health conditions,” she said. “They know what to get out of the kids, and how they can get the most out of them.” Kate has already made a head start on Year 11 lessons — despite missing most of Year 10 and some of Year 9 — boosting her confidence for when she returns to regular classes at John XXIII College next year. “Instead of feeling like she’s lost all hope of learning and catching up … she’s so keen to start Year 11, which I’m so pleased about,” a grateful Ms Wagner said. And Kate found it easy to choose her Year 11 subjects — of which psychology is her favourite — inspired to aim for a career in the health profession by all the medicos she has met in the past two years. “Maybe a doctor, ideally, or a paramedic,” Kate said of her career aspirations. “Just anything in the medical field.” Compared to the distractions of normal school, Kate gets a lot more work done in hospital. “You can smash through a whole week’s worth of work in, like, one lesson,” she said. Providing extra motivation to study is the airy and colourful school room on level four at Perth Children’s Hospital. Its floor-to-ceiling windows are so high up the classroom appears to be floating above the ground. Catering for a mix of primary and high school-aged students, it’s one of seven classrooms in the building. Principal Caleb Jones said on a typical day, there could be up to a dozen kids gathered in the classroom. Some work in groups at their desks, while others read quietly in a side nook. They follow a standard school day, with breaks for morning tea and lunch. “We provide them with that normality of routine,” he said. Mr Jones said one of the biggest invisible impacts on sick kids was the social isolation they experienced. The school’s aim was to help them stay connected. “It’s giving the young person drive and purpose and something of normality outside of the current circumstances,” he said. Each child is assigned a key teacher who liaises with their family and their enrolled school. Teachers have to be flexible, never knowing what their day might look like from one day to the next. SSEN:MMH operates across all WA public hospitals. Increased access to technology also allows its teachers to support children with medical referrals to learn from home. As well as supervising kids in the classroom or online, teachers deliver bedside lessons to children too sick to leave the ward. Or to students like Ethan Stevenson and Caliese Jones, who spend three days a week hooked up to a haemodialysis machine. Along with thousands of other Year 12s, Ethan has just graduated from high school and scored a part-time job. But the 17-year-old’s achievements are all the more remarkable, given he has spent thousands of hours in the past five years attached to a machine while it filters his blood. During those long hours of treatment, the former Fremantle College student still tackled his school work, often with a gowned and masked teacher by his bedside. “It helped a lot because I still managed to finish school,” he said. “Now that I’ve finished school, one of the teachers from here has helped me with graphic designing. She’s going to teach me how to design my own shirt to raise money for a school in Cambodia.” One of Ethan’s former teachers, Heather Saunders, said staff had been delighted with the effort he put in to getting through his Online Literacy and Numeracy Assessment. All WA students must pass the OLNA to graduate from high school. Despite missing big chunks of school, Ethan sat — and passed — the online exam on a laptop while also hooked up to the machine that does the job of his failed kidneys. Caliese, 18, who has also finished Year 12 after spending much of her life on renal dialysis, said she enjoyed schooling through the hospital. “I liked it,” she said. “They helped a lot. My favourites were probably maths and art. I’m waiting for a job interview for a traineeship — the teachers helped me with my resume.” Caliese’s mum, Meranda, said school staff had been “really lovely”, even helping to set her up with a laptop so she could complete a vocational qualification. For Ms Saunders, teaching sick kids is a privilege. “A lot of people say to me, don’t you find it very sad?” she said. “And of course it is sad, but I also find it incredibly heartwarming to see how resilient they are and how supportive their families and staff are. “It sounds so cliched to say you feel as though you are really helping and it feels meaningful to be connecting these children with their schools and helping them keep up with their education.” The former high school English teacher joined the hospital school seven years ago, finding the change from mainstream schooling both different and rewarding. Extra challenges come with bedside teaching, such as needing to cart resources and activities around with her. Or knowing when to mask up or wear a gown and gloves. While they teach the curriculum, the teachers also work hard to make lessons engaging for kids who may be feeling unwell, fatigued or unmotivated — and sometimes all three. “We do puzzles, word games, we do educational, hands-on interactive things,” Ms Saunders said. “There’s amazing stuff like Guess the Country where they go online and look for clues on where in the world the place is.” “It’s a fine line between understanding their health is the priority … and knowing just how much to engage and what they’re capable of.” Helen Kerr, who has been with the school for nine years, said she had planned to become a teacher of the deaf. But when she returned to TAFE to study sign language she took on a part-time job to help pay her way, bringing fun activities to kids at Princess Margaret Hospital through the Starlight Foundation. “While there, I realised there was a school in the hospital and I was like, ‘actually, I’d really love to work here’,” she said. Ms Kerr said teaching in a hospital environment, where pupils call teachers by their first name, was quite different to mainstream classrooms. She loved being able to work with students one-on one, something that was difficult to do in a normal school with a class of 25 or more. “I value the rapport you develop with students and their families,” she said. “You’re supporting that non-medical side of their journey, helping them feel like a normal kid.”