Healthy Education

This week I was fortunate to be invited as one of the keynote speakers for the Blackboards and Bandaids conference in Brisbane. The conference is attended by welfare educators and has a range of Health and well being presenters on a variety of topics.
The Mater Children’s Hospital have conducted the conference for the past four years as part of the Mater Children Hospital School program.

I was privileged to have a short tour of the school after my keynote and workshop and visited classrooms for junior, middle and senior students. Computers are a big part of their education and the classrooms look similar to those in a normal school, only smaller for less numbers. Some students are short term, however for some; their illness necessitates a long stay. In many cases classes are conducted in the wards as some children are not well enough to leave their beds.

As I passed the emergency waiting room it was sad to see so many young children waiting to be seen by doctors, with anxious parents beside them. It made me reflect how lucky many families are to have healthy children but more important, what a wonderful job this hospital based school does. It means that most children at the hospital can feel that part of their life is still normal and that they are part of a school community, which for young children who are dealing with an illness is a very important to their coping mechanism.

Spare a thought for another wonderful part of education that we don’t often get to see.