First grade students walk down the hall at Jefferson Lincoln Elementary School, where teachers have created a “sensory hall” for students to get out their energy, Friday morning in Centralia.
Jefferson Lincoln Elementary School first grade student Karma Thomas walks down the school’s new sensory hallway Friday morning in Centralia.
Students may have been enjoying their days off over spring break, but several educators at Jefferson Lincoln Elementary School took that time to create a “sensory hallway” for students — a hallway where students can play around and release some energy.
“It’s like an obstacle course you have to do,” said first-grade student Jazmine Moulden, who noted that she was a fan of the new hallway. “It was kind of weird when I first saw it. I was like, ‘What is this?’”
Over spring break, Jefferson Lincoln Elementary School Principal Kelli DeMonte, teacher Taylor Carroll, paraeducator Susie Holmgren and secretary Lacey Koidahl created the sensory hallway. Since the old Jefferson Lincoln building is slated to be demolished this summer anyway, the group spray painted pieces of the hall for students.
Friday afternoon, they planned to add even more “obstacles” for students. Before, DeMonte said, the kids had a tendency to run through the hall. The new colorful dots, lines and handprints distract them.
By spray painting various colors of lines and circles on the floor, as well as handprints along the sides of the walls, students create their own movements. DeMonte said students spend a lot of time following rules during the day, and that this is an opportunity for them to forget about the rules.
“They (teachers) have said they have seen less pushing and shoving in line, especially with Kindergarten and first grade when they’re walking,” DeMonte said. “(Children that age) are not so good about personal space and all of that, so they are always moving and touching and pushing. Now they have this focal point.”
Karma Thomas, another first grade student, jumped on various colors and skipped down the hall. She said that she really likes the “no rules” hallway.
“My favorite part is I can do the jumping and the hand things,” she said.
DeMonte said that while the students have only used the sensory hallway since they got back from spring break, she is already noticing positive results. Hopefully, she said, the new Jefferson Lincoln will have a sensory hallway as well.
“If it shows to be effective for kids and we’re seeing things like safer behaviors in the hallways, higher levels of student engagement in the classroom, decrease in our discipline referrals with students, then it makes sense that it’s good for kids,” DeMonte said.
Additionally, teachers in the Centralia School District have been receiving trauma-informed training and learning about how adverse childhood experiences affect student learning. Providing students opportunities to move stimulates different parts of students’ brains and helps them be more successful in the classroom.
“What we have noticed is with higher poverty populations … a lot of times there are things such as just homelessness and different kinds of abuse and that kind of thing that our students experience,” DeMonte said. “It ties to the brain development and how it can alter brain development — these traumatic events. So we have learned that just providing them opportunities to move, it just helps to connect to their brain as far as stimulating different parts of their brain to help them learn, and be more effective and successful at getting academic tasks done in the classroom.”
Students are scheduled to move into the new Jefferson Lincoln Elementary School for the 2019-20 school year, but DeMonte said she hopes to install another sensory hallway in the new building.
“We are working on just taking steps to hopefully make that happen,” DeMonte said. “We will obviously not spray paint it — this is just kind of a trial one — but we have found a company that has really nice ones that can be professionally installed, so we are hoping to put that in the new building on the bottom floor.”
