Patient Teacher

Ronald Cortes

Philadelphia Inquirer

What an assignment, Teach one-on-one, and forget luchroom duty! All you have to do is prepare for multiple grade levels, do without a classroom or your own, work around the exigences of doctors and nurses and worried parents, allow for the effects of the diseases they are taking them for and coodinate your plans with each student's regular teacher back at the school.Then acknowledge the possibility that you may be developing a mind for a future that will never come. This is all part of teaching hospitalized children, which is what teacher's do in the Philadelphia School District's Hospital Homebound Program. Their job is to provide continutiy between the time a student enters a hospital and the time he or she leaves-and to give healing prededence over learning while they are doing it. Madeline Jordan instructs student Marcus Williams at the Children's Hospital.

Ronald Cortes, "Patient Teacher," in POYi Archive, Item #20592, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/20592 (accessed April 21, 2025).