Teacher without classroom helps patients make grade
Published: February 14, 2006
Jami Hoeksema is a teacher without a classroom.
In a typical day she may jump from elementary to high school lessons and back again. All her teaching is one-on-one and all her students are fighters.
They battle cancer and kidney failure and other serious illnesses, all seeking treatment and hope at DeVos Children’s Hospital.
Hoeksema, 39, accepted the job as educational liaison and hospital teacher three months ago and learned right away the job was going to tug at her emotions.
“Initially, there were days when I said, ‘I don’t know if I want to be able to handle this,’” said Hoeksema, a mother of two small children.
But she has adjusted to seeing little kids hooked up to IVs and machines, and she has learned to focus on the good she is doing. Every day she helps sick kids catch up with school work they miss while undergoing treatment. [Children’s Hospital Boston (Images of America)]
“I do my best to focus on what my job is as far as helping them with their education,” she said. “It’s an incredible privilege to be able to work with kids who are going through health issues. Giving them education gives them a little control over their lives.”
Before Hoeksema started making rounds, 12-year-old Allison “Ally” Hunt, of Montague, was falling further and further behind the rest of her fifth-grade class.
Last week, Hoeksema helped Hunt with a math worksheet while a dialysis machine did the cleansing work Hunt’s only kidney is no longer able to do. Hunt travels about an hour each way for dialysis three times a week.
“She misses 31 to 35 days a semester,” said Hunt’s mother, Tina Hunt.
But with “Mrs. H’s” help, her daughter is finally getting caught up. Hoeksema is the liaison between children in treatment and their schools. She calls and e-mails their teachers and helps them complete class assignments and tests.
“When they’re sick they can’t do anything, so when they’re feeling well we have to really push them,” Hoeksema said.
“This has been really good for the kids,” Hunt said, watching how her daughter perks up when she gets to work with Hoeksema.
“We write stories with the nurses names in,” giggled Ally Hunt, a special-education student, retrieving the fictional piece she wrote with Hoeksema about nurses eating too many cookies and getting fat.
Last week, Hoeksema got a heart-shaped Valentine from one of her youngest students, Brent Rogers, 6, of Eau Claire.
Denise and David Rogers, learned their son had a cancerous tumor Dec. 7. He had surgery to remove it the following week and is now undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments. [100 Questions & Answers About Your Child’s Cancer]
Last week, he was having trouble eating on his own and had to receive a liquid nutrition supplement that ran through a tube into his nose. He looked exhausted, but Hoeksema was able to coax him through two pages in his first-grade phonics book. He is working to catch up with his classmates at Lybrook Elementary School.
“We have the page marked where the class is — and that’s our goal — to do more than the class every day so we can get caught up,” Hoeksema said.
“All of his friends think he’s just having a ball outside of school,” said Brent’s mom, Denise Rogers. “But he wrote back and said, ‘I still have to go to school.’”
With Hoeksema’s help, Brent is expected to be able to rejoin his class when he’s feeling better.
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