Oct 30, 2018, Columbus, OH, This Week Community News: Heritage Elementary School: Spaces help calm students, aid learning http://www.thisweeknews.com/news/20181030/heritage-elementary-school-spaces-help-calm-students-aid-learning Staff members at Heritage Elementary School recently developed a new way to reward students or quickly calm those experiencing behavioral lapses while also supplementing classroom learning. … Two “sensory spaces” have been developed by teachers and staff at the school to develop reading and math skills, to reward good behavior and provide “brain breaks” for students who might have extra energy to release or who are having trouble staying on task with their classmates. … Another sensory space referred to as the busy board has a number of locks, knobs, slide bolts, faucets and such students can manipulate to redirect their focus. … Additionally, the space has elements where students work string through holes in pieces of foam adhered to walls, and even a series of locks that students stop to unlock using keys and combinations. … “Typically, if they are angry or frustrated or whatever, we want to get them calmed down immediately,” said Lori Starkey a paraprofessional educator at Heritage. “So, we’ll have them do a bear crawl or a crab walk. …
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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