When a child in your class is diagnosed with cancer, it can be devastating. School is important for learning new skills and concepts, socialising with people outside of immediate family and gaining life skills through different experiences. School provides structure and boundaries to keep children  safe and to help them grow and accomplish goals.

Classroom teachers work to create a trusting relationship through the year with each of their students, accepting each one of their unique personalities, strengths, and challenges.

You may feel worried for your student as a lot of things in their world are about to change dramatically. You may also be worried about their peers and how they will react.

Listed below are tips and suggestions on how to support the children in your care during this time.

The experience of a diagnosed child

Some of the changes your student may face are:

Samuel’s story

Four-year-old Samuel was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in February 2023. Sam is in inter-maintenance to support his remission. He is looking forward to going back to kindy.

When your student is diagnosed the family may choose not to tell the school right away.  Sometimes a diagnosis is quick and sudden, and at other times it takes months of tests and doctors’ visits to get to the point of diagnosis and for the school to become aware that something is going on. You may notice absences from school. Many families may be trying to process the news of a cancer diagnosis and once they feel more settled in the news and know what is going to happen in terms of treatment, they may inform you and the school. It can also be helpful to ask them for the contact details of someone that is helping the family at home so you can receive updates, share positive gifts or messages from classmates, or update parents and carers about how their other children are doing at school without overwhelming them.

After the family have advised you and the school, it might be a good time to have a meeting with the family about who they are comfortable for you to share this information with, e.g. other teachers, classmates and classmate’s families. Informed school staff and families can accommodate the student and family’s needs; anticipate questions from students, colleagues or families and help to distribute information (if consent has been given). (1)

Regular check-ins with the family are incredibly important because when a child has cancer, their lives – and their family’s lives – are turned upside down.  Maintaining a connection between the school and the family can provide a comforting sense of “hey they haven’t forgotten about us.”

With consent from the family, it can be helpful to appoint a school liaison to be the key point of contact in the school. This could be a teacher that the student is comfortable with or someone from the school wellbeing team. It is important to ensure the family and student are feeling comfortable with this arrangement and have trust and rapport with this identified point of contact who can provide ongoing support around the changing needs and communication with staff on the family’s behalf. (1)

Keeping up with their education

During treatment your student may worry about falling behind in their schoolwork. It’s essential to keep communication open and ongoing. Flexibility can reassure both the student and their parents if they feel anxious or worried about schoolwork. The aim is to help the child stay engaged and connected, attend school whenever possible, and feel comfortable and safe while there.

Depending on cultural backgrounds or different personalities, some families might place a stronger emphasis on keeping their child up to date with schoolwork whereas some families may focus on the task at hand in the present moment and think about schooling when they feel their child is strong enough. We need to remember every family will have a different approach to school, attendance and transitioning their child back into school.

Most major hospitals offer educational support programs for students who have a long-term illness. If this is your student, obtaining consent from the family to liaise with the hospital’s contact person may be a way to understand more about the child’s illness, get a health care plan and put a support plan in place to ensure the child’s needs are catered for and met.

Supporting their classmates and peers

If other students are aware of their classmate’s cancer diagnosis, they may have a lot of questions. With consent from the parents, we’d encourage you to be honest in your feedback when speaking to the other students and provide reassurance that they can come to a teacher to discuss concerns and worries for their ill friend, and not to try and answer the questions themselves. We’d also like to encourage you to be mindful of the impact this could have on other students, especially if the cancer prognosis is not positive.  You can use the resource below to help you talk to a child about cancer or if you are needing more clarification and support, speak to the family and the treating medical team if this is an option.

As a teacher, you can play an important part in your student and their family’s cancer experience “Families come with different expectation around confidentiality and what to tell other people.” Checking with the family if they consent for teachers, classmates and school friends to know about the cancer diagnosis can help guide teachers when communicating with people.

Once the family have consented, it’s important to meet with the family and get an understanding what kind of language to use, what to say, what not to say, and what is highly confidential. It’s important to understand this is the family’s information that they’ve allowed to share with you.

After obtaining consent from the family, there are a few ways you can support and keep the lines of communication open for your student while they are away from school:

Your other students may ask questions. Explaining the common side effects of cancer – like fatigue, nausea, hair loss, and trouble concentrating – can assist them in grasping the physical and potentially emotional hardships that cancer can bring. They may look sick or different to what you’re used to. It’s important to teach the other students’ empathy over these changes so they don’t resort to bullying.

Once you have consent from the family, you may want to organise with other staff or families about how to support the student and their family.

When it comes to learning, offer the family options to keep their child connected. Short visits are especially valuable for social connectedness but opportunities to learn with peers is also helpful. Virtual attendance and remote access to learning activities is also an option worth considering and discussing, however these  can be challenging for both the teacher and student. Regular check-ins with parents is always a plus as it works to reassure the family and child that they are important as also to ensure their well-being and to offer learning support i.e. to check if the student understands the work provided. -Another option is to have a ‘study buddy’ (2) not to necessarily ‘study’ with them but there to remind you as the teacher that ‘Tommy’s not in school’ or ‘please don’t forget Tommy is not here’, and to keep the conversation between peers ongoing. This could be organised through a roster; the student then knows they have a couple buddies during the week checking in or sending/dropping things off. (2)

Adry’s story

When Adry was diagnosed with testicular cancer in his last year of high school, he recalls the support he received from his school friends.