“School is essential in the universe of the child. It is that place where he makes friends, learns, discovers a part of the world. This contact with the school and with his peers allows him to normalize the day to day, forget about his illness and feel that he continues to be part of a group, that his life has not stopped due to illness ”. These were the words of the Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Pilar Alegría, at the recent presentation of the support guide ‘Students with cancer. Guide for teachers’, prepared by the Education Commission of the FEPNC (Spanish Federation of Parents of Children with Cancer). The document offers detailed information to teachers on the different types of cancer, the treatments and their derivatives, addresses the difficulties that the student may face and suggests activities to work in the classroom, audiovisual resources and readings, among other materials.
What does the guide offer?
Despite being a rare disease among children, each year nearly 1,500 new cases of cancer are diagnosed in minors (0 to 18 years of age), even being the leading cause of death from disease up to 14 years of age. With these data on the table, the support guide aims to be a tool or work manual for the education of children and adolescents with cancer. In addition, it can also help to develop the psycho-pedagogical evaluation of this type of student, and the development of programs and materials appropriate to the Special Educational Needs (SEN) that may derive from said disease.
Divided into five sections, the guide shows information about the different types of childhood cancer, such as leukemia or lymphoma, as well as the treatments or long-term sequelae they can leave on students. It also offers relevant information on the diagnosis of this disease at school age. Specifically, this section presents some advice and recommendations for teachers related to accompanying minors in the first steps of the disease, how to face going back to school (after the reincorporation of students) and how it should be intervention in the classroom.
Resources and materials for teachers
After these first sections, the guide has a space dedicated to resources and educational materials. Divided according to the educational stage (Infantile, Primary, Secondary or Baccalaureate), the document presents different pedagogical proposals for teachers such as stories, songs, movies, creative or reflective activities… All of them explained step by step. The last two sections of the support guide focus on the care of families in educational centers (it can be done, on the one hand, with mothers and fathers and, on the other, with brothers and sisters) and in those cases where those whose illness of the minor is in an advanced stage or who have died from cancer. For the latter, it addresses how to deal with grief in the classroom (by educational levels), in addition to showing a series of actions and activities to be carried out between teachers and students. The guide can be downloaded for free here: