High School Leukemia Reflection

This semester I was assigned to Easthaven Elementary School and for my end of course project I had my class make get-well cards for Leukemia patients. This is very different from my original proposed project idea, but I felt this one made a much bigger impact on everyone involved. I work on an Acute Leukemia floor in the James Cancer Hospital and the kids were raising money to help the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. Once the kids knew I worked on a leukemia floor, they asked me all kinds of questions about my job, the patients etc. It was really cool to teach people about our patient population and how the money people donate really does help the patients. According to an article written by Michael Grever, MD and John C. Byrd, MD from the …show more content…
When I found out I was assigned to the Columbus City School district I knew there would be issues of poverty, I just didn’t know how bad. I’ve mentioned several times that these kids don’t have their own individual supplies; they all share pretty much everything. The kids don’t have their own textbooks, they share those as well; if they have a homework assignment from the book, the teacher will make a copy and give it to each student. My CP paid for a lot of her classroom supplies with her own money and she constantly buys pencils, crayons, markers, colored pencils, glue, scissors, paper etc. When the students made the cards for the Leukemia patients, she provided all of that paper as well as the supplies used to decorate and color them. It’s hard to plan things like this to do because if the school doesn’t have the supplies, the teacher had to buy them with her own money and that becomes really expensive; in turn, this also places a burden on the teacher. My CP wants her students to be able to do fun things, they just …show more content…
I had several people cry and they said it was just nice to know that there is someone out there who truly cares and wants them to get better; even if they’ve never met. This whole experience has reaffirmed my choice to become a teacher; whether I teach at a really fancy suburban school, or a really tiny poor urban school, I just want to have an impact. Every child; no matter their socioeconomic status, home life, neighborhood etc. deserves a great education and to know they have someone they can talk to and someone who cares about their future. I saw the look on our patient’s faces just from receiving a card from a little 10 and 11 year-old kids and truly realized how, no matter how old you are, you can have an impact on someone else’s