I have recently spent time remembering back to my mainstream classroom teaching days in an effort to reflect on students who were disengaging from school. In particular, I’ve been reflecting on those students I taught who missed time due to illness.
It was fairly common for student to become unwell for a few days, or even weeks. In those cases I can recall making sure to collect all the important handouts and notices to either send home with a sibling, or gather together for when they returned. There were times when students became quite unwell or required surgery, and their absences would last for a few weeks. On these occassions I would hunt through the storeroom for a large piece of cardboard to fashion into a ‘get well soon’ card. Usually there would be a few crafty students who would enthusiastically take on the task of decorating the card, and ensure that each student had added their own ‘get well soon’ message to send home.
In most cases, the student would shortly after return to school, pick up where they left off, and their usual routine would continue.
I remember the first time I had a student who was chronically unwell. Her name was Isabelle. She was a bright, and dedicated student whose family were quite involved in the wider school community. In middle school, Isabelle was diagnoses with a brain tumor, and required ongoing and aggressive treatment with the goal of surgery. Isabelle’s absences from school were frequent and lengthy, and for a couple of years her time away from school exceeded her time at school.
I worked alongside Isabelle, her mother, and the children’s hospital school teacher, to gathering school work she could complete when she was well enough. The concept was a good one – Isabelle would be able to keep up with work while she was away, so that she could slot back into the classroom when she was able.
However, it soon became apparent that the concept was practically flawed. Isabelle mostly wasn’t well enough to keep up with the work, and even if she was she was missing out on the crucial face-to-face components of teaching and learning. As each month passed, Isabelle was slipping further behind not only in her academics but also her peer connections.
If you’ve ever had a teenager at school you may realise most will say they don’t like school – except for seeing their friends. Friendships are constantly evolving, and someone who was a ‘BFF’ in January, may now be just ‘okay’ by April. While there was some attempt to connect Isabelle to her school work, there was little that could be done to authentically maintain peer connections. It also became clear that the more Isabelle missed from school, the harder it was to reconnect her back into her peer group when she returned. As months passed, Isabelle would return to school for days or weeks, only to spend her lunch-break in the learning support unit, rather than with her usual peer group.
Isabelle’s mother met with me one day to say that Isabelle was becoming increasingly anxious about coming to school due to her acute awareness that she was unable to ‘keep up’ with her work. Her mother recalled how she had explained to Isabelle that there was no expectation that she complete all the work, and that she could complete what she was able. I asked her mother about her friendships and she explained to me that one-by-one her friends had slowly dethatched.
It’s been years since I thought about Isabelle and her mother, and her journey with cancer. What’s interesting for me now, is that I now have a daughter, the same age Isabelle was, who also has a chronic illness. My daughter doesn’t have cancer, but she does have chronic health conditions which have, over time led her on the same journey of school disengagement.
As I reflect on Isabelle’s journey, I wonder what I could or would have done differently if I understood more of what she was going through? Is there a way that our mainstream schools can really meet these needs? And if not, what can be done?
These are the questions that keep me up at night, scratching my head a wondering WHAT IF…