Eldon students gather to celebrate fellow classmate with brain cancer

Cancer can be difficult for anyone and any family, especially during the holidays.

To help support an Eldon student suffering from a rare form of brain cancer, the entire student body held a pep rally and even had t-shirts name with the little boy’s name on it.

Children cheered, “we support Christian, how about you?”

“He was having really bad headaches and they thought it was migraines but it ended up being the brain tumor,” said his fourth grade teacher Kari Duncan.

Since mid-November, Christian has been battling a rare form of brain cancer. To help make his trips back and forth to the hospital, students made a special Christmas present for him; a video.

“At the beginning of the year we decided as a team that not only are we here for the instructional but we are here and committed to each child and so when we found out that one of our students had a health issue, we took it upon ourselves. We wanted to treat him as we knew we would want someone to treat us, and so when we knew he wasn’t going to be here today, we wanted to bring him up in spirits,” said Principal Michele Herbert.

The students also sold t-shirts supporting Christian for $10, and collected donations for his family’s expenses.

“Every student in this building earned a shirt and I’m so proud of all the students and staff for making him not only supported through the t-shirt fundraiser, but by wearing our shirts and we will continue to do that throughout the year,” said Herbert.

Like the back of the shirts says, they all just wanted to tell Christian, “we’ve got your back.”

“All the kids are thinking about him everyday and we definitely miss him,” said Duncan.

The district officials said they started with more than 400 shirts and have so far sold more than 1100. They also said every student earned a t-shirt, through an act of kindness.

The principal and Christian’s teacher plan on bringing up the video of the pep rally, one of his t-shirts and hand made cards that his class made to the hospital tomorrow.

Principal Herbert said she would like to thank everyone who participated in making the pep rally happen, including those that helped by donating and one of Christian’s best friends in his class who sold more than 60 shirts by himself.