Students learn lessons of hope

At about 10 minutes after 9 a.m., the sunny classroom is still empty of students.

"Sometimes they get here a little late," said teacher Cindy Britain as she walked through the colorful classroom. "They'll get here."

The school hours can be slightly irregular because there is nothing regular about the school itself.

The students, Britain said, are probably late because they've spent a long night at the hospital.

The one-room school is inside Minneapolis' Ronald McDonald House, a refuge for out-of-town families that have a child being treated at the University of Minnesota's Amplatz Children's Hospital or Children's Hospitals of Minnesota.

The school is charged with tailoring practical school lessons for children of all ages who are at risk for academic delay due to illness or the impact of pediatric illness on the rest of the family. Some of those students are patients, but many are siblings of patients who are too sick to enroll.

When a child comes to the school, Britain contacts the student's home school and works to conform lessons to concepts from that curriculum.

Britain, who works with teacher assistant Libby Hoops and a few volunteers daily, said the school day requires a lot of juggling.

"You have to have a lot available to you and we're just a small facility; we don't always have that," she said. "Sometimes you have to learn with the kids. And they really respond to that."

The classroom averages 40 kids a school year, most of whom cycle in and out as treatments are necessary. A child has to be at the house for at least two weeks to enroll, but some stay as long as a couple of years. About 75 percent of the families are there with a child receiving bone marrow transplants, and the average post-transplant stay is 144 days.

Individual challenges, joys

Midway through the morning one day last week, Britain and Rowan, a dark-haired Egyptian girl with an eager smile, sat curled up on beanbag chairs, reading through a science textbook together.

Moments earlier, Britain was at Sean's desk, gathering markers, glue sticks and scissors for the seventh-grader from Black River Falls, Wis., who sat head in hands, a White Sox cap covering his ears.

Sean, 12, who has a rare disease involving an abnormal proliferation of cells, starts chemotherapy this week. It was a late night last night, he said, and he's having a hard time being creative with his art project.

"You can," Britain urges, putting her hand on his shoulder. "You're just tired."

It's those interactions that remind her why she loves teaching at the Ronald McDonald House.

"Here, I can be with the whole child," she said. "We talk not just about school, but about their feelings, what they're going through. And kids really grab onto that because their whole world has been turned upside down. Their parents are freaked out, their siblings may be dying. They can come to school and get some sense of normalcy."

Trying days

Even though Britain said the school is not a sad place to work, there are often reminders of why the kids are there.

"I've had students pass away," she said, tears filling her eyes. "It's unbelievably difficult, because you fall in love with them. Oftentimes you take the role of parent because their own are in such a state. ... They're your babies."

More than making up for the sad days, she said, is the firm belief that the work done at the house and school has touched countless lives.

"It has been like a gift from God," said Rowan's mother, Sagy, who was taking the family back to Egypt that evening because Hassan had become stable enough for the trip. "It makes everything easier."

Amelia Rayno • 612-673-4115