Life Lessons In The Classroom
Centerville 4th Graders See Teacher Through Cancer Treatments
CENTERVILLE – Ever since 4th grade teacher Travis Lehrke started chemotherapy, his students at Centerville Elementary School have been curious about where he goes every other Friday morning.
All they know is that at 11 a.m., Lehrke puts on his backpack and gives them last-minute instructions as they file out for Phy Ed. Their teacher disappears from Room #127 until Tuesday morning—sometimes Wednesdays, if he isn’t feeling well enough to come to school on Tuesday.
And although Lehrke, 35, has answered many questions and explained as best he can what chemotherapy does and how it will help him get better, exactly where he goes and what happens when he gets there has been difficult for students to visualize.
But on this particular Friday, the Friday before Christmas, the students can see that something is different: KARE 11’s Jeffrey Demars is in the classroom with a camera, and a reporter from The Citizen newspaper is present.
The two will cover the story of Lehrke’s treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma and how his treatment has been a learning experience for everyone.
Lehrke’s students know that aft er Christmas break they will have the opportunity to view a video made during his chemotherapy appointment that aft ernoon at St. John’s Hospital in Maplewood.
The footage, shot by Jodi Ritacca and Deb Olson at St. John’s new Cancer Care Center-which opened one year ago last October—will help the students better understand how their teacher takes his medicine, and what it means to have cancer.
A Letter—And A “Heads Up” Lehrke, who is in his third year of teaching at Centerville, has been open with his students about the challenges he faces, adding that the fact that he lives locally has helped.
“I know most of the families,” he said. “When they found out I had cancer, they said, ‘This isn’t somebody we don’t know, it’s Mr. Lehrke!’”
Lehrke sent out a letter to the families giving them a “heads up” that he had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s, and that their 4th graders would have Karen Stevens as a substitute at least every other Friday and on the following Monday.
Understandably, it came as a surprise.
“I thought, ‘That’s amazing,’” Lino Lakes resident Sydney W. told The Citizen. “I didn’t think he would ever get cancer.”
But Lehrke believes his candidness has helped.
“Ultimately, when I reflect on this experience with the kids, it’s out in the open and it’s not their mom or dad—it’s their teacher,” Lehrke said, thoughtfully.
“I let them ask any questions they want to: everything from ‘Are your eyebrows going to fall out?’ to “Are you going to be there in January?’”
At Morning Meeting, Lehrke’s students soon learned that he would likely lose his brown hair. When his locks started falling out in earnest, he shaved his head. The students have mixed emotions about the sight of their teacher’s bald head. While the film footage rolled on that Friday, students voted as to whether Lehrke would wear a hat in class for the cameras—or just leave it off.
The vote was unanimous for the hat.
Fortunately, Lehrke isn’t about to run out of hats any day soon.Cameron M. says he and his classmates wondered how to help their teacher feel comfortable when he went out in public without any hair.
After some thought, the students could see that a hat to cover Mr. Lehrke’s bald head was just what was needed.
With a little help from Principal Bob Stevens, the “Lids for Lehrke” project was born.
“We each gave him one,” Cameron said. Many of those hats adorn the classroom.
In a show of support, lots of 4th graders at Centerville Elementary— including Lehrke’s daughter, Morgan, were allowed to wear hats to school this fall.
“They pretty much had hat day every day,” Lehrke said.
The learning experience has been shared with the other 4th graders, including Morgan’s classroom.
“On several occasions, [Mr. Stevens] brought the whole 4th grade out in the library and talked about it: ‘Here’s how we can help him,’” Lehrke said.
And Morgan herself occasionally ventures into her dad’s classroom to give him a hug.
“People have been quick to recognize that it isn’t just me that has been affected,” Lehrke says quietly.
Not All Smooth Sailing Lehrke believes that his experience has benefited his students.
“They’re at that age where the world revolves around them,” he said. “[But] some of them have asked, ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Do you think you’ll be at school next week?’ “I’m glad they’re concerned enough to ask those questions, too.”
As his students’ horizons have broadened, Lehrke said, “we’ve also talked about other people, how every body is different.”
Students soon learned that there were other cancer patients being seen at St. John’s Cancer Care Center.
At the suggestion of Karen Wilcox, a nurse at HealthEast who administers Lehrke’s chemotherapy, the children began drawing pictures for other cancer patients at the hospital.
Their parents, too, have pitched in, cleaning Lehrke’s classroom aft er school, decorating the classroom bulletin boards, making meals for the family, and shoveling their driveway.
“The staff , too, has been really great. It’s been powerful to see how much people will do for you,” Lehrke marvels.
But he is quick to add that it hasn’t all been smooth sailing, and that some students have been anxious for him.
“One Friday, there was some really poor behavior [in the classroom],” Lehrke said. “We think it was just their nerves.
“Mr. Stevens had a talk with the students after I left . He told them, ‘Let’s deal with our emotions.
Let’s not send Mr. Lehrke off to the hospital with high blood pressure!’”
Keeping His Chemotherapy “Date” At the hospital, Lehrke checks in after meeting his wife, Brooke, in the parking lot.
Taking the elevator upstairs to the Cancer Care Center, the pair are greeted by nurse Wilcox, who says that the first order of business is a blood draw.
Chemotherapy will take place if the lab results show it’s safe to proceed.
White we wait, we admire the students’ cheery and colorful “get well” drawings, taped here and there on the walls around the bright and airy nurse’s station and in the treatment alcoves.
Many of the pictures depict Christmas trees and other holiday themes.
Upon returning from the lab, Lehrke settles into a comfortable chair in a private chemotherapy room equipped with one small piece of machinery.
The space, which is designed to accommodate a visitor or two, is cozy once we are all in there with our cameras.
Brooke sits next to him; a drawing by daughter Morgan adorns the wall.
Lehrke reaches for his wife’s hand. “In a strange way, [the chemo session] is kind of our date, forcing us to sit still and talk for four hours,” he says with a smile.
Nurse Wilcox hooks Lehrke up to his porticath, tucked under his shirt. The ‘port’ serves as the doorway for Lehrke’s medications, a number of which would be harmful if administered through a normal IV, Wilcox explains.
First, Lehrke is given doses of saline, Tylenol, Aloxi—to combat nausea—and steroids, which Wilcox says will make Lehrke hungry, crabby and hyperactive, but keep him from reacting to the cancer drugs he will receive.
Those drugs, called ABVD (an acronym standing for adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine and dacarbazine) are the chemotherapy regimen of choice for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and they are potent—potent enough to kill cancer cells.
“His white blood cells are a little bit low, so we know it’s working—but there is good and bad to that,” Wilcox reports.
Lehrke adds, “Chemotherapy kills the bad, but it also kills the good,” a lesson he says was not lost on his students.
The chemotherapy will take a number of hours. By the time it’s done, Lehrke says, it will be a shock to his system: “I’m zoned out—I feel pretty strange until bedtime. Tomorrow and Sunday,” he says, “food is starting to look unappealing. I don’t start to feel tired until Monday or Tuesday— but we’ll soon be closing that chapter.”
Lehrke was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma on August 20, 2008. Hodgkin’s is less common among cancer patients, but it has more of a typical treatment pattern for the neck and chest tumors that result, exhibiting an 86% survival rate—higher than non-Hodgkins cancers.
Recent tests have shown that Lehrke’s cancer is now gone.
Regardless, he elected to have several additional chemotherapy sessions—the last one was scheduled for last week, Jan. 2.
But so far, Morning Meeting discussions have not included the word “remission.”
“[The kids] know the cancer’s either there, or it’s not,” Lehrke said. “They still see things in black and white.
“They’ve asked, ‘Will it come back?’ and I’m honest with them.
“I don’t know.”
Lehrke’s 4th graders are looking forward to a class bowling and pizza party in February after he is feeling better.