
Kari Cassedy shared
that
one
request
she
receives
regularly from
teachers is
for
strategies to help
students who
have sensory
processing
disorders
or difficulty
with
self-regulation. Cassedy is
an
occupational
therapist (OT)
who
serves
at
five
PWCS
locations,
Washington-Reid
Preschool
Center;
Coles,
Marshall,
and
Minnieville
Elementary
Schools;
and
Charles
J.
Colgan
Sr.
High
School.
In
addition
to
working
with
individual
students, as
an
OT,
it
is
her job to
develop strategies teachers
and
school
teams
can
use
to
help
students
focus
so
they
can
learn.
One
such
strategy
is
therapeutic
spaces,
which
are
areas
within
the
school
designed
for
movement
and
learning.
Recent
studies
in
neuroscience
have
found
that
physical
activity
and
movement
can
change
the
way
the
brain
works
and
accelerate a
child's
learning.
Finding
the space
and
funding
to
create
dedicated
areas
can
offer
challenges
for
schools.
However,
thanks
to support
from
the
school
principals
and a
successful
grant
proposal
she
submitted
last
year
through
SPARK,
the
education
foundation
for
PWCS,
Cassedy's
new
Cricut
Air
2
cutting
machine
helped
her
install therapeutic
spaces,
also
known
as
sensory
paths
and
activity
walls,
at
Marshall
and
Minnieville
Elementary
Schools
over
the
summer.
Cassedy
also
received
support
from
her
project
assistant,
her
dog, Biscuit,
who
is
training
to
be
a
therapy
dog.
Therapeutic
spaces
can
be created
in a hallway, classroom, or other
existing
locations
and are designed
to give
students
an
opportunity
to
redirect their
actions and
promote
and
guide
movement by
following fun
decals.
"The therapeutic
spaces are
meant
to improve a
student's balance,
motor
coordination,
and
spatial
awareness, while
at
the
same
time
getting
their
bodies
in
an
optimal
arousal
state
for
learning,"
said
Cassedy.
"This
is
especially
exciting
for our students
with
special
needs,
especially
those
with
sensory
processing
disorder.
Research
shows
that
sensory
play
builds
nerve
connections in
the
brain's
pathways,
which
lead
to
the
child's
ability
to
complete
more
complex
learning
tasks
and
can
improve
classroom
behavior."
Movements
on
a sensory
path may mimic
a crab
crawling,
bear
walking, a
rabbit hopping,
walking
heel-to-toe, or
even
doing
wall
pushups.
Components may
be
a lily
pad
and
frog
decals showing students to frog
hop from
one
lily
pad
to
the
next.
Or
they
might consist
of feet
decals,
placed
in various directions or through
a maze that
encourages them to
practice
stepping,
jumping,
and
twisting.
Examples
of
an
activity
wall
include
a
large
qwerty
alphabet
to
practice
wall
typing,
or
sight
or
spelling
word
decals
to
work
on
eye-hand
and
motor
coordination.
Both
sensory
paths
and
activity
walls
give
students
the
opportunity
to
practice
balance,
motor
coordination,
eye-hand
coordination,
spatial
awareness,
and
self-regulation and
provide
a
break,
allowing
them
to return
to
class better
able
to
focus
and
attend
to learning.
"By
having
my
own machine
and
a
start-up
supply
of
materials,
I
can
help
all
of
my
schools
create
these
spaces,"
said
Cassedy.
"This
will
help
the
students
on
my
caseload
directly,
while
also
providing
an
opportunity
for
all
the
students
in
the
school
to
participate
and
benefit
from
the
sensory
activity. We
are
really
looking
forward
to
when
all
the
students
can return, and
I
believe
these
spaces
will
have
a
tremendous
impact
on our
students' ability
to
focus
and
learn."