Oct 4, 2018, Disability Scoop: Sensory-Friendly Design Enters The Classroom https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2018/10/04/sensory-friendly-design-classroom/25534/ As more students with special needs enter school systems nationwide, educators are increasingly designing their classrooms to boost behavior and academic performance. Sensory-friendly design focuses on controlling the sights, sounds and smells that can be under- or overstimulating to students with autism or other developmental disabilities. A few schools have been built for this purpose, but any classroom can be retrofitted to improve its sensory environment, experts say…. Several newly-built schools in Minnesota’s Northeast Metro Intermediate District 916 set the gold standard for sensory-friendly design. At the elementary and high schools outside St. Paul, architects and designers worked with teachers to create a healthy environment for students with special needs…. At the district’s Karner Blue and Pankalo education centers, which opened in 2014 and 2017 respectively for kindergarten through eighth grade students in special education, hallways are shortened and curved to discourage running. Venting ducts run through the hallway ceilings instead of in classrooms and are larger than average to help diffuse the force of air and potential noise. There are breakout rooms for one-on-one therapy sessions or quiet reflection…. Some students dislike large open spaces while others don’t want to feel closed in. Schools can “layer” their spaces by placing furniture and panels to section off larger spaces, Kuehl indicated….
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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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