A new partnership between Nemours Children’s Hospital and the University of Central Florida is aimed at bringing the classroom to hospitalized children.
Sixty children take classes through PedsAcademy, which brings math and science instruction to their bedside so they’re not behind when they return to school.
Megan Nickels of the University of Central Florida runs the program with Nemours Children’s Hospital staff. She says among the students is a patient with cystic fibrosis.
“We put her in the virtual reality and had her climbing Mount Everest," she said. "And so, in climbing Mount Everest she’s able to transcend her condition but as she’s doing that. We have her doing tasks that have her calculating the linearity of the mountain.”
Nickels says the program is crucial, as one study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found students who miss more than 15 school days between the seventh and eighth grades are seven times more likely to drop out.
