ORLANDO, Fla. – Almost a year ago, 10-year-old August Terry was diagnosed with a bone cancer called Ewing sarcoma.
Chemo, radiation, and hospital stays meant going to school was not an option for August.
"It was really devastating to her, as far as not being able to go to school and interact with her peers," said Wendy Terry, August's mother.
August is being treated at Nemours Children's Hospital, where he enrolled in PedsAcademy, a first-of-its-kind, in-hospital school with 3D printers, virtual reality, and robots.
"They make like normal school into like fun things," August said.
There are no boring work sheets and courses are tailored towards kids' needs.
"Those courses are redesigned, so that our preservice teachers can understand the medical condition of the child and understand what accommodations need to happen in lesson planning," said Megan Nickels, assistant professor of STEM Education at the University of Central Florida and faculty director of PedsAcademy.
For 11-year-old Neal Christie after suffering a rare stroke, his interest in robots blossomed at PedsAcademy.
Neal won the "future engineers" award for his project in the science fair.
Unlike many hospital programs with up to a one to 400 teacher-student ratio, PedsAcademy has a 60 to 100 teacher to student ratio, which means August and Neal get an amazing education until they're ready to head home.
PedsAcademy is available free of charge to all children up through collegiate studies, whether they're in Nemours hospital for days or years.
Not only do patients keep up with their peers, Nickels said that after their six-month program in robotics, students are a grade advanced in mathematics.
Currently there are other hospitals around the country interested in adopting this model in order to have their own PedsAcademy.