Many students enter our school buildings each day. Many are successful, and are able to adjust to teacher expectations and routines. However, unfortunately, a lot of others can not. Now more than ever, they are faced with new stress, restrictions due to the Coronavirus Global Pandemic, and learning challenges that children have never had to experience before. These all existed prior to the 2020-2021 school year for some of our students who have learning challenges such as attention, sensory, or learning deficits. Our idea is to provide areas in and around each elementary school building for students to be able to have their sensory and physical movement needs met.

The purpose of the Design Challenge for Lawrence Township is to meaningfully impact the MSDLT organization through efficiency, effectiveness, and significant quantifiable improvements. We feel that general education teachers, special education teachers, instructional assistants, and building administrators spend a portion of their time each day trying to support students with their emotional and behavioral needs. Some of these staff members spend large amounts of their day pulled away from their regular schedule, and their other students to support a student in need. Finding ways to support students with their sensory, emotional, and physical needs is a very large deficit in school buildings today, especially with all of the stressors such as the pandemic, social justice movements, and raised rigor and pace of instruction to fill in gaps. Having simple tools in place for any and all students to benefit from would make instructional settings much more efficient, effective, and able to have improved instructional outcomes.

The purpose of this project is to create safe spaces in and around the school for every child who could benefit from it. There are many students who have diagnosed and undiagnosed attention deficits, need a cool down place in the school, or a place to be rewarded for good behavior. This is a perfect solution to students needing a place to take a break.