Chelsea Hospital School

I have finally started my internship and it has been wonderful the last few days. I am interning at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital school, which works with hospitalized children ages 4-19, as well as community kids who are not able to attend a regular school due to medical conditions. 

       I arrived at 8:30 Wednesday morning, a little anxious and was greeted by my director, Paul, who has an awesome Australian accent! He showed me around the school, which consists of a large secondary and primary classroom joined by a hall and office area. The secondary class, where I spend most my time consists of 5 computers, a camera, television, tables, lots of the kids' artwork and a "chill-out room" with bean bags, a piano, guitars, a projector, and strobe lights :) At 8:45 I met several more members of the team who were very welcoming. Each morning, the team meets and runs through a list of about twenty or so children and their specific needs, who will get to attend class and who needs to be visited bed-side. In order to understand what they are talking about I was given a 3 page list of acronyms for medical conditions! Obviously I've already memorized all of them, not. After the morning meetings, the students start arriving and class begins at 10:00. There are about 10 community students who attend fairly consistently, then there are the ward kids, who are currently hospitalized and come down sporadically when they feel up to it. The first day I got to work with a sweet girl undergoing facial reconstruction through an amazing organization, "Facing the World." You can see her picture on their website, she's the first one: http://www.facingtheworld.net/real-stories/past-children.  She was trying to learn English, but was just really not feeling well, which was pretty upsetting to watch. Sitting down with her was the hardest situation I've dealt with so far. Other than that though, I really enjoyed meeting the other students and helping in any way I could. 

             My second day on the job was the day of the hospital school's official Grand Opening. They moved into a new location at the end of July, but just finished setting everything up. The whole day I was the little intern running errands, making name tags, and meeting tons of people. The grand opening was a huge ordeal with over 100 attendees consisting of parents, hospital workers, politicians, and media who came to tour the school. The director spoke, then one of the students who was a senior spoke about his 12 years spent at the hospital school. He was precious talking about how the workers there were family to him. It made me feel very privileged to get to work with these people. After the ribbon cutting, there were 50 kinds of cake and tons of people to talk to. The best part, however, was that even though it was only my second day, I felt like I was totally part of the team. The students were all talking to me and people were asking me questions about the school and it was like I had been there for years.

           Today, my third day, however, has probably been my favorite so far. We hosted some visiting teachers from Finland and we got to skype with their hospital school there. The kids enjoyed asking them questions about Finland and I learned a lot of interesting stuff too. One interesting fact is that Finland has the highest literacy rate in Europe and they go to school the least amount of hours, only about 20 per week in elementary school and 28 in secondary. The typical school in American is 35 hours  a week. Most of them also speak 3 languages, Finish, Swedish, and English. What  I most enjoyed today was getting to work one on one with one of the 12 year old girls. I went through her history book teaching her about Medieval England, (which was perfect because I just had a class on that Monday). She was so appreciative and it came so naturally, which really made me feel good. It's easy after going long periods of time without actually teaching to start getting bored with the classroom observations, but when I get a taste of actually helping a child, it just lights my fire and reminds me of why I want to teach. 

            In the afternoon, most of the kids were taken to an art exhibit and I worked on organizing the classroom. When labeling supplies I learned some interesting cultural tidbits. The English don't use the word marker, it's "felt tips," colored is spelled coloured, math is maths, and the students had to explain to me the English stereotype  "Chaz" which is like "wanna be gangster." The most funny, however, was when my director was trying to tell someone over the phone that he was just so worn out and he said,  "Yeah, I'm just naked mate, I'm plain naked."  

            Everyday is different at the Hospital School and that's why I'm so excited and, I'm already attached to the kids and it's only day 3. Though at times when I'm cleaning or copying and things are very slow, I know it will require patients, but I think that in the end, it is going to be an extremely rewarding experience.