She is in the middle of fourth-grade art class when I interrupt.
The little girl raises her hand and asks to be excused. She is, and then walks out of the office of her parents’ Castle Rock home.
“They call me Portable Emma now because everyone has to carry me around,” 9-year-old Emma Ciafone explains.
The story of Portable Emma dates back to Sept. 4, when one of the family’s three horses bucked and kicked her. She suffered a lacerated liver.
She would spend nearly a week in the hospital, where doctors told her mother, Kris Kuchenbrod, that Emma should not return to school for at least a month.
Kris Kuchenbrod did the only thing available to her: She took family leave from her job as a computer analyst with the University of Colorado. She would sit with Emma.
Before Emma left the hospital, 30 classmates and staff from Woodlands Academy, the private Castle Rock school Emma attends, crowded into her room to wish her well.
Weldy Nalls, the school’s technology instructor, had an idea. He could connect her to the school from home using the video camera on the computer.
Did they have a Mac? Turns out they did.
“I had no idea it was that easy to connect Emma with her school,” Kris Kuchenbrod said.
So every morning she wakes Emma and gets her dressed, and the girl clicks on her Mac and is welcomed by her teacher and classmates.
“School is now basically the same as when I’m there,” Emma says. “I still take tests and do everything my classmates are doing.”
The computer allows her to see everything being done in the classroom and for her classmates to see her.
“She hasn’t missed anything,” Kris Kuchenbrod said. “They even take her to lunch, and I give her lunch so she can eat with her classmates.”
She has been on the computer for three weeks now. The noise of it at times startles her mother.
“I’ll be in the kitchen and hear all of these voices. It takes me awhile to figure out it’s not some strangers in the house. It’s Emma’s class.”
If there is a success story here, it is because of Woodlands Academy, she said, which was started by a group of public school teachers who believed they could do better on their own.
“If Emma was at another school, I don’t know what I would have done about her schoolwork,” she said.
For Emma, the experience has been otherworldly — her word.
“Sometimes, (classmates) will say, ‘Emma, you are so lucky.’ Actually, I’m really not. The reason I have had to do this has not been a good thing.”
She acknowledges getting more work done at home. There are fewer distractions there, and it has allowed her to heal, she said.
In the beginning, Emma did not think attending school by computer would work. Maybe they would not be able to hear her, or maybe she wouldn’t hear them. It has worked out perfectly.
She is scheduled to return physically to class Oct. 4. She can barely wait, she says.
“I’ll be able to turn my head and actually see real people,” Emma says. “And I won’t have to ask people if they will carry me to the next class.”
What will she miss?
“I do kind of like sleeping in. I’m really going to miss that.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
