CancerEd APHOES Conference Award

Hello All! In May 2018, the CancerEd team was pleased to attend the APHOES/ACMN Let's Move Mountains conference this year in Denver, Colorado. In attendance were child life specialists, hospital educators, social workers, nurses, and more who all came together to discuss helping children with cancer. We were so grateful to be apart of this conference at our vendor table and also for a poster presentation (specifically about our teacher survey results). 

The CancerEd Team was also given the APHOES Bridge Award, that specifically designates people and teams who are committed to bridging the gap between hospital specialists and the education system for pediatric cancer patients. We were humbled o accept this award, as it validates all the years of hard work creating our lesson plans/resources!

For a summer update: we will continue to develop more materials, specifically drawing from collaborations at the conference. We also hope to expand our age ranges (middle school/high school), and continue our research with focus groups and surveys. 

Thank you all for your support and we look forward to another great year!

CancerEd Summer 2017 Update

Hello all! As this summer is winding down fast, we wanted to provide an update of all the wonderful things we have gotten to create throughout 2017 so far. As more publicity and inquires have been driven by the development of the CancerEd.org website and more articles through Calvin College, our focus has been to continue developing our website and marketing materials. With a redesigned website, creation of a brochure to distribute to schools and hospitals, and marketing through social media (specifically Facebook and Twitter), our organization has become more known and now being utilized throughout classrooms!

Another main focus for us this year was having consistent formatting for all of our lesson plans. We designed aesthetically pleasing and functional, easy to read templates to reformat all of our current lesson plans and developed new lesson plans. Our new lesson plans include topics of: Lung Cancer & Smoking, Skin Cancer & Sun Protection, and Cancer Prevention & Healthy Habits, with more under construction. They will be uploaded to the website soon!  Further, we have created Lesson Plan Maps (detailing which order to teach each lesson based on time availability), Glossaries, Crossword Puzzles and Word Searches to diversify and supplement our lesson plan materials. Lastly, we have gathered a comprehensive collection of resources (websites, videos, games, books, etc.) for parents of kids with cancer, kids who have parents or siblings with cancer, teachers with a student who has cancer, and more.

Our future goals include: developing more lesson plans, continuing to pilot and revise our current ones, maintaining our website and marketing materials, and expanding our outreach through presentations and fairs. As you can see, we have been very busy this last year; our CancerEd Team continues to work hard to reach our goal of providing freely-accessible educational materials for grades K-5 to teach them about cancer. Check out our new lesson plans, and we promise to keep you updated with future developments!

CancerEd Summer Update

This summer, the CancerEd team has made progress in a few different areas. First, CancerEd has created a number of new lesson plans that will be posted to the website soon. These lesson plans will cover a wide range of topics ranging from cancer prevention to cancer treatments.

 Along with developing lesson plans, CancerEd has been working on social science research. Just recently, both a parent and a teacher survey were launched. The goal of the teacher survey is to gain a better understanding about what resources teachers need to educate kids about cancer as well as to gauge teacher interest in using these resources. The teacher survey received 124 responses and the CancerEd team is working on data analysis with the results. 

The goal of the parent survey is to find out how parents are communicating with their children about cancer and what resources they need. The CancerEd team is still looking to gain more responses to the survey. The survey is directed toward those who have parented children between the ages of 5-18 while having cancer. 

CancerEd will continue working hard the rest of the summer to meet the needs of educators and families around the country. We appreciate your support!

Burton Elementary

CancerEd visited Burton Elementary, another local school, in the spring of 2015. Again, students from Dr. Amy Wilstermann's Honors Cancer course came to help.  At Burton, CancerEd was invited to teach in three 5th grade classrooms, therefore, they needed to modify material from a K-1 level to a 5th grade level. 

Students watched a video of cell division and Dr. Wilstermann explained that normal cells know when to divide and when not to divide.  Then, she explained that cancer cells do not work correctly due to a mistake in their DNA, which are like the cell's instructions. She compared cancer cells to a bike with a brake that no longer works. 

After, students split into small groups to focus on specific types of cancer. Students learned about leukemia, brain cancer, and lung cancer in their groups and then explained their new knowledge to the class. 

Many students believed that everyone diagnosed with cancer dies a premature death, although this is false misconception. There was gratitude from teachers and students alike with the materials and activities. If anything, students took home a nugget of cancer knowledge they did not possess before. 

More about Burton Elementary.