Stuffed tigers and shared songs: Connecting hospital rooms and classrooms for Le Bonheur’s youngest
Three-year-old Jazzy participates in story time with other children through an iPad in her hospital room at Le Bonheur. University of Memphis teacher in the Early Learning and Research Center, Hannah Pirami, helps Jazzy with her interactions with other children. (Greg Campbell/Special to The Daily Memphian)
A tiger stuffed animal sits on a table at the foot of 3-year-old Jazzy’s bed at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital. Six miles down the road, her preschool classmates have their own stuffed animal tiger named PJ, to remind them of their peers at the hospital.
They regularly join one another through video calls throughout the week. Jazzy’s classmates greeted her on a recent Thursday through the tablet set up in her hospital room.
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Laura Testino
Laura Testino is an enterprise reporter on The Daily Memphian’s metro team who writes most often about how education policies shape the lives of children and families. She regularly contributes to coverage of breaking news events and actions of the Tennessee General Assembly. Testino’s journalism career in Memphis began six years ago at The Commercial Appeal, where she began chronicling learning disruptions associated with the pandemic, and continued with Chalkbeat, where she dug into education administration in Memphis. Her reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Times-Picayune, The Tuscaloosa News and USA Today.
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