Good Health, Good Heart
A school's partnership with a neighboring hospital shows kids real-life applications of science and caring
Portland, Oregon—Inside the Providence Child Center, six students from Laurelhurst Elementary School cluster around the wheelchairs of Darren, Mary, and Marielle, three severely disabled and medically fragile children. The Laurelhurst kids chatter as they color pictures of flowers, often touching the arms of the three much-older kids, all developmentally only several months old. The benefits to both sets of children are obvious: the Providence kids have the stimulation provided by contact with normally functioning children, and the Laurelhurst kids learn an early lesson in accepting difference.
These elementary-schoolers started visiting the hospital in first grade and will continue until fifth. The difference in their comfort level as they progress is obvious, but already by second grade they've lost their initial fear. They interrupt their coloring to describe what they are doing, watching knowledgeably for subtle responses from these kids who can't talk, noticeably pleased when they detect them. And without even knowing it, they are achieving several of their second-grade learning goals: learning about communication and about their neighborhood and community.
This program is one piece of a six-year-old, project-based partnership between Providence Hospital and the nearby elementary school that was designed from the beginning to benefit both partners equally, says Don Brown, director of the Providence Academy. He cites a walking map of the immediate neighborhood that the Laurelhurst students created. Hospital visitors use the map to find their way around.
Similarly, when a second-grade class was studying balance and motion as part of the science curriculum, teacher Karrie Locke connected with a physical therapist at Providence who demonstrated traction pulleys by setting them up on a dummy child (actually, a life-size doll) at the elementary school. "It was a great real-life application," says Locke.
Last year, teacher Ron Norman directed his fifth-graders to choose various hospital professions as subjects for a research project. Kids asked themselves what they knew about various jobs and what they wanted to know and then interviewed Providence professionals to find out about their work.
Among those questioned were a pharmacist, a respiratory therapist, a microbiologist, a hematologist, and the director of human resources. "The kids loved doing the interviews and, in fact, they reported later that they liked this focused research project best of all they did. And it met my objectives: It made them curious, helped them ask good questions, and made their learning meaningful."
In another popular project, a third-grade class collected data on newborns in the maternity ward. Students charted and graphed the number of babies born, their weights, the number of boys compared to the number of girls, and the birth weights of babies with smoking mothers versus nonsmoking mothers. "The exercise had math, science, and health tie-ins, and it was fun for the moms," says Laurelhurst Principal Teri Geist.
"Initially, we thought this partnership would be an opportunity to promote good health," Brown comments, "but it has turned into far more. We are fully integrated into the curriculum at the school in all kinds of ways I don't even know about. When I was over there last, I found the director of engineering talking to a class about how the hospital handles its energy supply."
The success of Laurelhurst's project-based learning has led to plans for expansion. Next year, the local middle school (Fernwood) and high school (Grant) will participate with Laurelhurst in the production of a video on hand washing that Providence will use to train employees and inform children.
Back in the child center, Bud Manley, a teacher with Portland Public Schools, quietly oversees the activities. "Look, you've colored red clover, the Vermont state flower," Manley says to a Laurelhurst second-grader. Darren, who's been watching and listening from his wheelchair, shifts his head to the right and then to the left. "Huh," he says. Manley translates. "Darren thinks that's funny," he says gently.
The goal of the typical partnership between business and education is for children to learn the skills to be successful at any job. In this partnership, however, something even more basic is also happening, at least among the children who've walked the three blocks to the child center. "As a former special ed teacher," says Debbie Vigna, "my thing is that kids should be accepted for what they are. And it's happening. Last year when we had a special ed kid with us in the afternoons, my second-graders were far more accepting of him than they would have been otherwise. And from this, they begin to learn about accepting other kinds of differences."
Back in the clutter of colored paper and Magic Markers at the child center, wheelchair-bound Marielle suddenly looks up at the corner of the ceiling of the brightly lit room. Sarah, a blond second-grader in glasses, drops her head next to Marielle's to peer upward at the same angle. She wants to see just what it was that drew her friend's gaze. Empathy, it seems, is not the least of the lessons contained in this project-based partnership.
