Essentials Magazine Essentials Spring 2019 | Page 20

SOARing into Active Classrooms:
A Case Study with an ADHD School
BY STEVYN GUINNIP, MSED
D
eep in the hills of North
Carolina, just outside of
Asheville, is a high school
called the Academy at SOAR. It is
an adventure-based school that of-
fers experiential learning to support
high school students with ADHD
and other behavioral challenges. I
visited their campus recently to see
how they were doing in their newly
redesigned math classroom. This
was their first year to offer stand-
ing workstations and active seating
to their students, so I wanted to
observe firsthand the impacts that
active design may be having on stu-
dent behavior and learning.
When I first arrived, Julie Lam-
bert, the Dean of Academics, greeted
20 essentials | spring 2019
me with a warm smile and contagious
laugh. She exuded patience and warmth
and was everything I would want in an
administrator helping my child through a
challenging stage of life. Julie proceeded
to introduce me to a few of the teachers
and show me around the refreshingly
simple, calming, and charming school.
The User Perspective
As I listened to the teachers’ expe-
riences, I understood why they had
an interest in creating active learning
stations. The students at SOAR were
there because they required special
accommodations that a traditional
classroom couldn’t provide. Before they
implemented the active classroom, Julie
said, “I’d have students who would need
to do a little lap around the road and
back because they just had to get this
energy out somehow.” After introducing
the active stations, Julie said, “They are
finding ways to expel some energy while
still being able to be present in class.”
I saw the evidence of this while I
observed one of the classes. Students
were standing, semi-sitting, rocking,
pivoting, or fidgeting their way through
the lesson. The girls, boys, and ad-
ministrators I interviewed all said they
experimented with different positions
until they finally found something that
worked for them.
According to one energetic male
student, this helped him stop focusing
on holding still so he could focus on the
lesson. Another student I talked with,
who had bright blue hair to match her
bright personality, admitted that it was
annoying to other students when she
tapped her foot and couldn’t hold still,
so using an active workspace helped
her fidget without distracting everyone
else because the base of the stool was
already rounded for rocking, and it has
a rubber non-slip pad for safety and
noise control.