{"id":189,"date":"2017-05-31T21:34:07","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T21:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/?p=189"},"modified":"2017-06-23T16:06:57","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T16:06:57","slug":"liams-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/liams-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"liam’s learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt has been an amazing experience. Liam is excited to do math now and he knows he can do it.\u201d \u2013 Diana Kurila<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Every Monday evening Liam meets with Diana for one-to-one tutoring support in his home. Most of the time, Liam is eager to get going with his studies when Diana arrives. This is huge. Not long ago, Liam generally avoided anything to do school work. But thanks to your support for our Education Support Program<\/a>, Liam is acquiring a love of learning.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Diana and Liam share a joke during one of their tutoring sessions<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cLiam is growing every day,\u201d says Diana, a second-year education student and volunteer tutor with Kids Cancer Care. \u201cHe\u2019s excited to get started when I come. He\u2019s enjoys math a lot more and he likes reading more each time. Liam is able to identify what he needs as a learner and tell me. He\u2019s really engaged with his learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liam wasn\u2019t born with a learning disability. He acquired it. At the age of two, Liam was diagnosed with a brain tumour. After two craniotomies, six rounds of chemotherapy, three stem cell transplants and daily radiation, Liam was left with a barrage of long-term after effects. Now eight years old and cancer-free, he still has issues with his balance and motor skills. His working memory and brain processing speed have also been affected.<\/p>\n

As a result, Liam is struggling to keep up with his peers in class and on the playground.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs he gets older, Liam is becoming more aware that he doesn\u2019t have the same abilities and he gets frustrated,\u201d says Mom Karla Gould. \u201cHis younger sister Madison is starting to pass him in some areas and that really frustrates him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liam is working hard to improve. Thanks to your generous support, he is able to\u00a0work on his balance and motor skills every Wednesday evening at PEER<\/a> (Pediatric Oncology Patients Engaging in Exercise for Recovery) and, on Monday evenings, Liam works on his math and reading comprehension with Diana. Liam\u2019s parents are seeing improvements.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s more confident and he\u2019ll give things a try now,\u201d says Mom. \u201cLiam\u2019s issues with working memory and processing speed means he can only take in small amounts of information at a time, so he requires a lot of repetition to learn. Every time he learns something new, he has to go back and re-learn the fundamentals. A teacher with 20 other students in the classroom can\u2019t give such individualized attention, so the extra time and the repetition he gets through tutoring are helping a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong>Diana regularly works with Liam\u2019s teacher to determine areas for improvement and to develop weekly lesson plans. She\u2019s become so adept at assessing Liam\u2019s needs in the moment and quickly adapting the tutoring session that sometimes Liam isn\u2019t even aware that he\u2019s doing school work.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiam really likes games and getting a bit competitive,\u201d says Diana. \u201cWe\u2019ll spend the first hour in a competition between us, adding and subtracting or multiplying, using manipulatives like his Lego characters. He thinks it\u2019s great. He\u2019s having fun and he\u2019s learning.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2016\/17, volunteer tutors gave 427 hours of one-to-one tutoring support to 19 children, who are struggling at school because of cancer-related health issues. Thank you for giving kids like Liam a chance to love learning too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Brighter futures with YOU<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt has been an amazing experience. Liam is excited to do math now and he knows he can do it.\u201d \u2013 Diana Kurila Every Monday evening Liam meets with Diana for one-to-one tutoring support in his home. Most of the time, Liam is eager to get going with his studies when Diana arrives. This is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-support"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}