Essentials Magazine Essentials Spring 2019 | Page 21

Special Needs Classrooms
The Movement-Minded Classroom
I learned that the idea for creating
active classrooms stemmed from Exec-
utive Director, John Willson’s personal
experience. He told me a story about
his own son’s struggle with ADHD that
began to be a problem in 2nd grade.
They bought him a Move stool to take
to his classroom, and John said the chair
“made a world of difference for him...
allowing him to move and stay in the
moment and be successful.” When it
came time to remodel the SOAR class-
room, John didn’t hesitate to incorporate
movement-minded workstations.
For many of us who are used to
traditional classrooms, fidgeting and
movement may seem counter intuitive.
A common phrase from teachers is, “Sit
still and pay attention.” The children
who can do that are rewarded for sitting
quietly at their desks and doing their les-
sons, while other children who can’t sit
still have been unable to cope in a “nor-
mal” classroom setting. Ironically, they
may get their only “allowable” exercise
in their march to the principal’s office.
The New Normal
My visit to SOAR inspired me to ask
questions like, “What if our concept of
normal is wrong?” “Is sitting still the
best way for learning to take place?”
“Could it be possible that the ones who
cannot sit still are more normal and in
touch with their learning needs than we
give them credit for?”
Eric Jensen’s work in his book, Teach-
ing with the Brain in Mind, provides
some answers to my questions. Jensen
explains that traditional school settings
have historically operated from the
mindset of a “Sit and Get” learning style.
However, he describes the part of the
brain that regulates motor movements
(cerebellum) as having over 40 million
neurons, most of which are outbound to
memory, attention, and spatial percep-
tion. So, by activating the cerebellum,
learning is triggered in the brain.
Jensen goes on to say that we now
know “the relationship between move-
ment and learning is so strong that it
pervades all of life.” Likewise, John
Ratey, author of the book, Spark: the
Revolutionary New Science of Exercise
and the Brain, says, “Movement is like
fertilizer for the brain.”
The ADHD Challenge
Inspired by words like these, all of
us can consider how we might incor-
porate more active learning in our
daily routines. And for the students at
SOAR, we can catch a glimpse of how
much more difficult it is for those stu-
dents who have been diagnosed with
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