Teachers Sara e Diana

Paediatrics at Santa Maria Hospital has a School since 2002, which was born of a protocol between PT, the National Association of Cystic Fibrosis of HSM, the Ministry of Education and CANTIC (Organism of this Ministry), because there were children who were hospitalised for more than a week and in need of continued treatment, which meant they were losing much of what was taught in class. At a time when the use of technology systems was scarce and knowledge was less universal, the use of video-conferences or remote classes was an oasis, an innovative system, but with a great need for IT and technical support.

Sara Costa and Diana Guerreiro are teachers assigned by the Ministry of Education to the Santa Maria Hospital. Hospitalized children are grateful for them. “We’re school employees out there, but our classrooms are in here”.

Sara (secondary school teacher) and Diana (primary school teacher) arrived with the intention of accompanying the children with cystic fibrosis, but their action quickly extended to all the others within Paediatrics who stayed for longer. Nowadays, they are able to guarantee a more personalised teaching activity from the 1st to the 9th year of schooling. “With students of grades 10, 11 and 12, I am able to teach Mathematics, which is my area. Otherwise, we contact the school and we serve as intermediaries for the adolescent’s school.” Life continues outside the doors of Santa Maria, as it does for these students, so one of them even took the exams to access higher education and got in with “an excellent mark”.

Usually, it is through the hands of the Paediatrics educators that Sara and Diana arrive at their students, but when they become chronically ill or stay for prolonged hospitalisation, they also become chronic students, and the educators call the teachers to warn them that the students are coming. But it is deceiving to think that because they are hospitalised, these kids refuse to learn.

Do most children who spend time in the hospital ask for classes?

Sara Costa: The majority does, but there are some who at the start don’t want to learn from us. Then, time goes on and that initial good feeling of free time starts to tire them. The suspicious looks become interactions, and then they ask us to get in touch with the schools to ask for activities and tasks.

Is there any trick to reach these students?

Sara Costa: There isn’t one… Perhaps they change when they understand that everything they’re going to do here will help them when they leave. Because the outside world goes on, even though they are closed off here. When they leave and go back to school, they won’t be able to rewind classes, they will have to pick up the pace. So we just make them understand the rhythm of things. If on one hand older people are more difficult to captivate, on the other hand, they adhere more because they realise the importance of not missing out.

And how is your communication with the Schools?

Sara Costa: We always start by probing the child or young person’s interest and involve the family. Only then do we contact the school through the Class Director and introduced the School of the Department of Paediatrics. We ask that the students do tasks whilst they’re here. Then it depends a lot on the schools. Some collaborate a lot and some less. But there is a reason for collaborating less, which is never due to unwillingness. Sometimes, they think that because the student is hospitalised, he/she should not be bothered with school work, as he/she is sick and should only try to get better. We try to show them that this position is wrong, because the more they focus on the disease, the less they are able to help themselves. We want the child to continue to be what he or she really is, a student, because this child is no longer anything else. The child is lying in bed and cannot play football or go for a walk. And we try to bring them some normality. Other times, the interaction fails because, as time goes by, the school forgets that he is a student there. But, in general, they cooperate a lot. The chronically ill patients already started to bring their homework. They are very autonomous, they exchange e-mails with their teachers and make arrangements with them. Then, we create reports and send them to the school to provide them with feedback on the student’s performance. Sometimes, we are invited to take part in the class council of the students who spend a lot of time with us. We are the mediators between the two parties.

But there is also a very interesting concept, the remote class. Where does it get included?

Sara Costa: The remote class was the main project of our School, which has become diluted, because schools are not able to create the level of interaction we expected. Let me explain that. There used to be a subject called “Project Area”, in which students worked on a common topic together with us, and this was then interactively shared in remote class sessions. But that subject does not exist anymore and there is no more room for this project in schools. Therefore, at the moment, we are only doing it with the School of the Paediatric Services at the Lisbon Oncology Institute. Actually, we also maintain a great interaction with the Estefânia and Alcoitão schools, and we work together in a network as schools of the Lisbon Hospitals. We set a common topic every year, and this year we chose “Living the heritage”, which we have been posting on the shared website. The last remote class we did with the Oncology Institute School was on the heritage of Lisbon, through which we discovered several city sites.
It was interesting because among the hospitals we had students from five different nationalities and the great majority of the students did not know these sites, because what they know of Portugal and Lisbon is the Santa Maria Hospital.

Curtain of friendship that was born of a large blanket of solidaritybetween institutions

Are those children from the PALOP (Portuguese-speaking African countries)?

Sara Costa: Yes, mostly.

And when they leave the hospital, do they return to their country?

Sara Costa: No. Many of them have to stay for longer, because they require treatment. They stay in a guest house or with relatives. And, in fact, these virtual classes allow them to take virtual tours around the city. Did you know that some of the children become sad when they are discharged, because they would rather stay at the hospital? They would rather stay here instead of going to a guest house, where they do not receive this kind of support.

But we have other projects. One of them is called “The robot helps!”, which has the participation of Professor Paulo Torcato, who comes to the hospital in his free afternoon and gives lectures on programming and robotics. The kids love it!

We also promote another project together with the Pavilion of Knowledge, which is called “Science is good for your health”. They come here and we perform experiences, or they bring some experts to talk about relevant topics (ants, dinosaurs, etc.). But we also visit them, through our computer, and use video-conferences.

Not being ill yourself, how do you adapt to the perspective of those who are? I imagine that teaching in a regular classroom is not the same as teaching in an isolation ward?

Sara Costa: We are a different kind of teachers. While teaching in a regular classroom, I see my class twice a week and for ninety minutes per day, and no matter how much interest I have for their lives, I have thirty students in front of me. Here, we spend time with them and their families on a daily basis, we get closer to them. Family members often come to us to talk. Doctor and nurses need to split their attention between many other children, and this is something they understand quite well, but with us it is different, they get the feeling that they can spend a little more time with us. We have room for them.

Sara Costa feels that they are being able to accomplish what they set out initially as they get contacted by external people who make themselves available to be teachers for one day. Francisco Silva is one such teacher for one day, and he brought the sea to the hospital and explained many interesting facts, namely the Nazaré canyon. It was our school’s Facebook page (Escola Departamento de Pediatria do HSM) that allow them to open this door to the world and promote their mission.

When they’re attending a remote class, children need to go to school on the 8th floor of the hospital, which has a classroom. But there are children in isolation that cannot leave their rooms. In those cases, Sara and Diana try to use their laptops to take the school to them. And if at the 8th floor classroom they do not need special clothing, Sara and Diana are not worse teachers when they go into the isolation ward and wear a hospital gown. They need very little apart from the spiritual strength, a few laptops and some ink cartridges.

The classes are very dynamic and every day they try to convey different messages, or the same message conveyed in a different way, by changing places and resources, so that no one ever loses interest or the sense of novelty.

The main message passed on to us by professor Sara Costa is the spirit of this small physical school, which entails a great commitment: “I see a student, not a patient”.

Joana Sousa

Equipa Editorial