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Debbie Gatti is the Registered Nurse for the district and coordinator of the district nutrition project.

I’ve always thought of literacy as reading words and being able to explain them back. But now, after spending a couple of days with the Ball Foundation whose main focus is on literacy, I understand it to be much more than that. That understanding has made me look at how I communicate with the children who are dealing with chronic illness.

For example, now when students with chronic asthma come in every day to use their inhalers or get a breathing treatment, I sit right next to the students while they are using the inhaler or doing the breathing-in treatment and ask them questions about what they are doing. I also started drawing pictures for them because at one of the Ball trainings I learned that a lot of kids don’t have very good reading ability but are still visual learners. So, we draw pictures of the lungs and talk about how the medication that they’re using actually works in their lungs. Then, when they’re done with the treatment, we do landmarks on their bodies to show where their lungs really are. Most kids think the lungs are two little sacks right here on top of their chests.

So, the kids are learning more about their illness and why they take the medication and how it benefits them. I try to give the older kids more vocabulary so when they are trying to communicate their needs to another caretaker, they are understood. It’s an empowerment. The kids actually know, “This is my illness. This is what I deal with. This is what I need.” They can become advocates for themselves.

I have one third grader now who is my asthma inhaler teacher who teaches other students the “No Dragons” program. If you have an inhaler with medication and a puff comes out the side when you use it, it means you are a dragon. So we teach the kids how not to be dragons when they use their inhalers. This third grade student has excellent technique, so I always bring her down to demonstrate when I have another student who is new to the “No Dragons” program.

Before my experience with Ball, the students would come into the health office and use their inhalers. Of course, I was concerned if they didn’t have the correct technique, but besides showing them how to use the inhaler, I didn’t take the time to explain why they were doing it or how to explain to someone else why they were doing it. As someone who has dealt with chronic illness all my life and who grew up with doctors, I was able to learn the vocabulary and explain myself quite well. These kids don’t necessarily have that benefit.

It’s amazing how I’ve taken a different focus on my work with these students. If I were to sum up what this experience with Ball has so far done for me personally, I would say it is true enlightenment of what literacy is. It’s not just reading and writing, but all aspects of communicating with the outside world.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.