Some kids love school, other kids live for summer break. But when a child is hospitalized for an extended period, schoolwork can be a lifeline—for both them and their families.

Through Cincinnati Children’s Center for School Services and Educational Research, full-time and part-time teachers, school liaisons, and volunteers work with patients to improve education and health outcomes in a variety of ways. The center has four service lines:

• The Hospital School Program provides direct instruction support at Burnet and Liberty campuses for school-aged patients.
• The Inpatient Psychiatry Program offers communication with school teams (per guardian consent and level of need) regarding admission, discharge and individualized recommendations to provide a safe handoff to the receiving school.
• The Partial Hospitalization Program provides education support and tailored recommendations for psychiatry patients as they transition back to school.
• The School Liaison Program provides support for patients with chronic and outpatient mental health conditions who need help working with their schools to document and accommodate their medical needs.

Sarah Steinke, school specialist in the Hospital School Program, joined Cincinnati Children’s in 2000—before the Center for School Services existed. “Cincinnati Children’s was a lot smaller back then, so for many years, I would, for example, be hired by the Psychiatry department, and I would work only with psychiatry patients, then Cancer and Blood Diseases hired me for a while, so I only worked with Cancer and Blood Diseases’ patients,” explains Sarah. “But when the center was created in 2016, instead of us being ‘reserved’ by a certain department and only working with those kids, we were able to be available to kids where and when they needed us.”

And most days, there are many patients with us who need School Services. At Burnet campus, there are three hospital teachers employed by Cincinnati Children’s and two teachers that Cincinnati Public Schools provides because so many students from their district are long-term patients here. The center also gets help from student teachers, students from UC’s Medical Sciences and Education degree programs, and volunteers—usually retired teachers and administrators.

Schoolwork Is Anchor to 'Normal' Life

The Hospital School Program offers open classroom hours, where inpatient students who are able to leave their room can get help with their schoolwork and access other educational materials and enrichment activities. But much of the instruction and assistance is provided one-on-one at the child’s bedside.

Most mornings, the teachers start their day by reviewing our Epic system to see which patients are still in the hospital and which have been discharged. Next, they spend time communicating and collaborating with the schools whose students they’re currently working with. Then they start planning and getting things ready for any volunteers or student teachers who are going to be helping them out for the day. “The hospital kind of ‘wakes up’ around 10 am, so we usually start heading out to visit patients then, and are making our rounds until about 3 pm,” says Sarah.

“Our students get about an hour of instruction and help with schoolwork, but their days are very busy here with other things,” says Sarah. “Because instead of math, English and science classes, they have PT, OT, music therapy, rec therapy, treatments and procedures—but schoolwork is the common thread that keeps them on track academically. They're getting some learning activity offered at least every day or every other day.”

Many children have assignments sent in from their schools. But these patients sometimes need help to complete the work because they weren’t in school when that topic was covered. One of these patients who recently worked with Sarah was 11-year-old Rebecca Hardeman.

“Sarah was fantastic,” says Rebecca’s mother, Emily Veil Hardeman. “Rebecca needed someone who would take the time to review her work and really teach her while she was in the hospital and at Ronald McDonald House, and Sarah provided that.”

Our hospital teachers not only help coach their patients by providing instruction and guidance, they also serve as a kind of buffer for the patients so they don’t get stressed by the amount of schoolwork they may be missing.

“After we have permission to release the patient’s information, we reach out to the schools and identify a key contact who we can communicate and collaborate with,” explains Sarah. “We ask them to send us schoolwork, and, often more importantly, we ask them to focus on quality over quantity. Because many times a child is going to open up their assignment folder or their Google or Canvas account, see all those assignments, and some of it doesn't make sense, or they don't know what the most important tasks to complete are. So we ask the school to help us identify—for each student—what they need to do to keep up, but not get overwhelmed.”

The hospital teachers try to prevent patients’ families from being overwhelmed, too. They will partner with our liaisons to coordinate the completion of myriad forms and processes necessary to release a child from having to physically be in school, while still keeping up their learning, including helping to set up homebound instruction when medically appropriate after discharge. They can also support a child’s transition back to the classroom. “One thing we try to assess when we talk to the families is how much they can do on their own,” says Sarah. “How much can we help them, and how much can we empower them? If they have a challenging medical situation going on, even if they're a very capable family, then we try to take as much of that off their plate as possible.”

Hospital teachers can also play more than one role in the lives of our patients and families. Sarah shared a story about a patient’s mother who said, “My son worked with one of your teachers. Not only did it help him keep caught up with school and bring some normalcy—and a feeling of hope that we're going to return to normal when we're done with this—but also, it was good to know that I have somebody coming into the room that I can trust, and who could give me a minute to breathe and go get a cup of coffee.”

Providing consistency and structure through education in a sometimes uncertain situation can provide benefits beyond a student’s academic achievement. “There’s tons of research about the long-term psychosocial outcomes of maintaining educational progress while in the hospital—especially for cancer and heart conditions,” says Sarah. “Every effort that helps provide normalcy and keeps our patients on track helps to improve that outcome.”