Sunday, June 19, 2016

What Flexible Seating Looks Like in a Life Skills Classroom

Flexible seating, flexible seating, flexible seating! If you didn’t read/say that ala Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, then we can’t be friends… just kidding! But really flexible seating is all the rage these days thanks to TopDog Teaching’s Kayla Delzer. Her room setup is amazing, and having watched her classroom (via social media) it’s clear to see that her little's love the arrangement.

My room at the beginning of the year
I just finished my second year of teaching in SUCCESS, and my first year of using flexible seating. SUCCESS is a self-contained life skills classroom. All of the children in my room are intellectually disabled along with a heap of other disabilities.

I sent Kayla a message before I took the alternative seating route. I could see how it looked in a room of typically developing kids, but how would my kids benefit from it. I asked Kayla her opinion on how it would work with my kids, you know the kids that are two and three grade levels behind where their age says they should be. How would my kids with oppositional defiance take to it? Would my little's with Downs Syndrome be able to choose AND still do their work? Would the other adults in my room even be open to this drastic change? Her answer, “Absolutely. The biggest growth has been among my oppositional defiant and EBD students.”

“There is power in choice and the freedom to choose where to work.” There is power in choice… As soon as I read those words, I knew I had to do it. All kids crave power. They want to be in control. Giving them the power to choose how they work best was empowering for me as their teacher.

With this new sense of empowerment I went on quest to get flexible seating for my classroom. It started with a Donors Choose project titled, “Alternative Seating for Alternative Learning.” I asked for wobble stools, hokki stools, and floor pillows. I wanted to make sure that  had enough seating for EVERY student on those choices. The reason: meltdowns. I wanted to give my students choices but I needed to make sure those choices wouldn't cause chaos. So I opted to for various color choices. My project was fully funded and by December we were on our way to getting rid of the desks. Shortly after the seating started to arrive, I wanted more. I started a project for standing desks. After that got funded we made the move to remove all of the traditional desks in the room. When the kids returned from winter break, we had tables, stools, floor pillows, and standing desks. 

Floor cushions!!

And our first standing desk! (That is my kid modeling it!)
But now what? We had everything we needed to to create a wonderful, "free" learning environment. But how could I implement this with most of my kiddos functioning at a low cognitive level? How would I be able to get them to understand their choice? I couldn't. I made a flip chart, a physical chart, and icons... But it didn't really work. They weren't understanding the choices they were making. 

So we made the choices for them, at first. We told them where to sit. After a few weeks we started to notice which kiddos stayed on task and which ones didn't. We noticed that a certain little worked much better at the standing desk (he didn't want to be at the standing desk though). Once he figured out that he had to get his work finished before he could sit, he became so much more productive, and he began asking (with words!) to sit on the stools or the floor. By the end of the year he was the fastest at completing his independent work. I also have a kiddo in a wheel chair that uses a stander. Being in a stander is important for her to help build that muscles in her legs. 

It wasn't until after the third time that we put her in the stander that we realized that one of our  standing desks  was at just the right height for her to work at!


I'm still not entirely sure that I have this flexible seating thing down. I do know that my kids made amazing progress this year. Was it because of the flexible seating? I don't know. But I do know that we started something amazing last year, and I'm excited to make it even better next year.