Medical Students Inspire Fort Worth Elementary Students During Service Learning Project

FORT WORTH – Settling in at a new school can be difficult for children of any age, but for students with disabilities the transition can be more challenging.  

Messiah Douglas, 6, a first-grader at Christene C. Moss Elementary, was diagnosed with autism at the age of 3. Art has been one of the ways he’s acclimated himself to his new school. He enjoys drawing steam engines and coloring most things with his favorite color, blue, even during recess.  

“I like to have free time,” Douglas said. “I’m going to be an engineer. I want to make steam trains.”  

His grandmother, Pamela Thomas, 56, a campus monitor at the elementary school, took the job this Fall to help him transition to his new school. 

“Before him, I knew nothing about autism,” Thomas said. “But I’ve educated myself to get into his world to try to understand him and help him through daily life.” 

When Ric Bonnell, M.D., Director of Service Learning at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, approached Charla Staten, Principal of Christene C. Moss Elementary, about having medical students paint a mural inside the school a year ago she was excited. On the first day of school, the students lit up with joy when they saw the first mural. 

“The kids were super-duper excited and were just like oh my goodness it’s beautiful,” Staten said. “When you tell them who helped to paint them they truly become great TCU frog fans.”  

A year later, the same group of medical students returned to paint new murals alongside first-grade, third-grade and fourth-grade students. It’s all a part of the Service-Learning curriculum at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU. The unique curriculum puts medical students into communities to meet patients in their own environments. It also helps the medical students inspire the next generation of students to go into medicine. 

That’s what Burnett’s about, Dr. Bonnell added. 

“Instead of talking to them in a lecture about getting out into the community and doing service learning why not bring them out and do it for real,” Dr. Bonnell said.  

Messiah was excited to meet the medical students and paint. It was all he talked about, according to Principal Staten.  

“Just being able to feel like he has an intricate part in making our school beautiful is going to be such a lasting effect on him,” Staten said.  

As you walk up the hallways of the first and second floors of the elementary school you see messages of empowerment like, ‘Let Your Light Shine,’ ‘Learn Something New Today,’ or ‘I Am Brave I Am Loved I Am Strong.’   

The words in the murals are filled with every color possible. They are surrounded with flowers, friendly-faced animals and there is even a mural with the face of Ms. Opal Lee, a Fort Worth native who helped make Juneteenth a national holiday.  

Alejandra Dominguez, MS-2 at Burnett School of Medicine, joined Messiah’s group to paint one of several murals.  

“He just wanted to paint one color but we got to take him around and paint that same color in different hallways,” Dominguez said. “You can tell that getting a creative outlet like this is something he needs often to get his energy out.” 

This is another way of learning and practicing medicine, Dr. Bonnell added.  

“We have several of our students that are going into neurology and going into pediatrics,” Dr. Bonnell said. “It’s good for them to see those students and see them as kids rather than as patients in the hospital.” 

Christene C. Moss Elementary is in Fort Worth’s Eastland neighborhood. The school’s student body is half Hispanic and half African American, according to Principal Staten. The service-learning activity resonated heavily with Dominguez who is Hispanic and was raised by Cuban parents in Miami, Florida. Growing up, her parents only spoke Spanish at home. She learned to speak English at a school with a similar student body population.   

“I understand their environment and where they’re coming from,” Dominguez said. “I can see how having medical students around me in elementary would’ve impacted me positively.” 

She also helped raise her nephew who has autism. 

“It reminded me a lot of working with him when he was that age,” Dominguez said. “He needed a little bit more instruction but once he has the instruction, he’s able to follow it well and regulate his emotions.” 

As Messiah painted with Dominguez he made, ‘choo-choo,’ noises and told her, “When I get grown, I’m going to drive the engine number nine steam train.” 

Service learning is only a few hours out of the classroom and clinic for medical students, but the impact can have a lasting effect on kids, Thomas added. 

“The children might not ever get a chance to do things like this outside of TCU coming in to help,” Thomas said. “Just giving time back to the community means a lot. I love it.”