Darrien Ingram hopped on his longboard and took off down a hill, flying around a curve.

Four weeks later, he woke up in the hospital.

Ingram, now a senior at North Hall High School, suffered two skull fractures after falling off his skateboard on April 15. Six months later, he is fully healed and medically cleared to wrestle with the North Hall Trojans again.

“I woke up sometime in May, and I was at the hospital for a couple weeks and then went down to the Shepherd Center for another four or five,” he said. “Then I came back home.”

Ingram had weeks of rehabilitation and recovery, including learning to walk again. He had extensive testing to determine how he was healing.

“I took a neuropsychic test at the hospital,” Ingram said. “I had to take it a couple times, to get back to driving and stuff like that.”

Throughout that time, his family worked with the school to ensure he wouldn’t fall behind because of the injury.

“At the end of the year, we stayed in close contact with his mom, who of course wanted to get missing work at the end of the school year,” said Jan Black, one of the North Hall High School counselors who have worked with Ingram. “So school officials worked with the family during his recovery to finalize his grades for last school year. And that was very successful.”

Ingram said while dealing with his recovery, there was was no possible way to catch up on all the work he missed in the last two months of school.

“They worked with me. But they also asked the state board if I had to do all the work, and they said no, which was great,” Ingram said. “They let me move on.”

This year, Ingram works regularly with his counselors to ensure he has everything he needs to stay caught up on school work.

“(Counselor) Kathy Oxford works with him, sometimes on a week-to-week basis, about what he might need, and she’s made some scheduling adjustments as he’s requested,” Black said. “They talk often, and he’s a great advocate for what he needs, which is really the most important thing for students to be successful.”

Black said it was important for Ingram to have “a conclusion to the year and a fresh start this year.” She added that he is a remarkable student, respected by his teachers, and she was impressed by the emphasis Ingram and his family put on his education.

“That was always a concern of theirs,” she said. “Through all of it. Even as he was taking baby steps to recovery, they still were concerned about his education and thinking toward the future saying, ‘What is he going to do next year? Because we know he’s coming back.’”

Supporting special students

This occasional series features some of those students with special circumstances who are served and cared for by local schools.