My students need a variety of sensory items such as balance disks, rockers, spinners, tactile items for the hands and feet, brushes, and a ball pit to create a sensory room to aide in reducing anxiety and increasing student engagement in learning.
Want to see the impossible happen? Help me create a sensory classroom for my students and watch your generosity nourish brilliance from minds that think differently than most. I teach a self-contained class for students with Autism who are in the 7th and 8th grades. Our school is in a low-economic neighborhood with most of our students qualifying for free and reduced lunches. Our community was ravaged by a hurricane 4 years ago and the school system is scraping the bottom of the barrel to get appropriate supplies to the classroom that need them. Your help is so needed and appreciated!
Our school system is struggling to get back on its feet since the hurricane destroyed several schools and damaged supplies for classrooms. My school is at this time being renovated and my class is in a portable building for the next 2 years. However, my students' needs come first and the first thing they need is a room they can use to get their neurological systems back in balance and learn to self-regulate their behaviors when dealing with other people and situations that make them anxious. Otherwise, learning is limited.
My class really needs a sensory room with balance beams, rockers, spinners, tactile items for hands and feet, brushes, and a ball pit. All of these items allow a student with Autism to ground himself by touch and movement. In this way, he preserves his dignity and self-respect by learning to recognize and regulate the physical and emotional changes in his body when upset. It also allows my students to stimulate their brain before academic activities so that they can attend longer, focus better, and retain the information more successfully.
You cannot know how incredibly proud and independent you will make my students become when they have access to what they truly need and crave. Once their basic needs and sensory needs are met, learning takes place and brilliance emerges. You, with your donation, will be the one who has empowered these truly remarkable students to be all they can be. Thank you!
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. De Roche and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
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