Another story of hope, and love, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
“Bing” is a leukemia patient, he is already six years ago, had never been in school, he couldn’t forget that he wanted “to attend class with other kids”, his mother felt bad about it; about a month and a half ago, “Bing” finally got his wish, the principal and the teachers came to his bedside to teach him.
The idea of “bedside teaching”, was thought up by the doctor, Kuo, who was the head of the children’s development and behaviors department from the hospital that was a part of the Chinese Medicine University, he’d discovered, that “the children are smiling, while the parents are crying”.
Kuo had seen how unhappy the young cancer patients are with barely ANY interactions with each other. “Even though they’re faced with death and illness, they still have the right to choose to be happy”; “Bing” allowed his mother to hear this heart wrenching wish, it had made the doctor inquired the Head of the Department of Education in Taichung, Wu, “Can’t we bring the schools to them?”
“If the children want to get educated, but couldn’t, then, the fault is with the department of education!”, the Department of Education immediately opened up the sessions of “Touring Class by the Sickbeds”, with three classes per day, six hours of regular classes, and would ask the principals of the schools to come and tell kids stories every single week.
There is so much light in the classrooms, the nurses’ stations made the accommodations to make the ward look like a classroom, removed all the medical equipments, and placed the children’s size furniture, then, class IS in session.
The story time by the principal was the most popular time of all, it wasn’t even time yet, and, the kids would come out with their masks, along with hats, and some kids had told their mothers to remove the drip faster, so they could get a good seat.
“Children, do you know who I am?”, “I’m the king who loved apple trees so!”, the principal from Li-Ren Middle School, Hu, came out, dressed up like a king, took along the book, “The King’s Apple Tree”, she’d asked the kids, why would the king love apples so much?
The children answered upon being asked, “He loved apples”, “He loved how the apples would grow on the trees”; as Hu walked around the “classroom”, the children’s gazes followed her, and their faces would change, with the developments of the story, and couldn’t help but laugh too hard at the tales.
The parents close by were focused completely on the children, used their cell phones to take down the photographs of the kids laughing, and gotten into the tales too, and continually giving encouragements to their children, “You’re so wonderful, child”., their eyes are red, and filled with the love of the mother.
The head nurse, Jia was so very moved, from before, if the kids saw the nurses, they’d think about shots, meds, and kept shaking their heads “no!”, with this bedside teaching program, they would show their talents, asked for the shots ahead of times, “That way, it wouldn’t get in the way of attending classes!”
A child who had just had a bone marrow transplant, after forty days of quarantine, can finally attend the story times, he was so excited that he didn’t sleep the night before. As the stories are being told, he couldn’t help but closed his eyes to rest, but he insisted on being there, as the stories are told.
A girl, Tseng from Jushan, Nantou, had a relapse of her leukemia back in August, she didn’t want to leave her classmates. Tseng’s mother said, that her daughter looked down, and had once begged her, “Please, allow me back to the ‘school’, to just look at where I sat would be enough.”
After getting into the story program, her daughter would be so animated, with a TON of things to tell her, kept wanting to catch up to the rest of the classes, to get better, so she could dance alongside the rest of the classmates.
“The City of Taichung will keep this program going”, Wu stated, children who are hospitalized, are the ones that that Department of Education is focused on, so long as kids keep their interests, then, the teaching shall continue.
And so, this, is a good program, to allow the children who are ill, to have as normal an experience as they can, because their lives are hard enough, getting shots, getting chemo, radiation, and medication, and, thankfully, someone came UP with the idea of this bedside teaching, and, hopefully, this will continue, to benefit more of the ill children, to help the parents cope too.
Mirroring the World 