Paso Robles Joint Unified Faculty District, a faculty system with about 6,000 college students in California’s Central Coast area, is working laborious to beat obstacles to college students’ studying—and a brand new Snoezelen® multi-sensory room on the Marie Bauer Early Training Middle will assist the district obtain this objective.
Designed with the assistance of Faculty Specialty studying setting specialists, the area contains particular furnishings and tools to assist all college students—however particularly these with sensory processing points— to regulate their setting and regulate their feelings so that they’re capable of study extra successfully.
“We discovered that sure college students, after spending time on the playground, had bother regulating their our bodies to take a seat nonetheless for normal instruction,” mentioned Heather Wahlberg, the middle’s director. “Together with our academics and occupational therapists, we wished to supply extra help for these college students and educate them self-regulation abilities so they may study alongside their friends within the classroom.”
Utilizing cash from a state grant initiative known as the Inclusive Early Training Enlargement Program, or IEEEP, the district determined to create a Snoezelen multisensory setting inside its early training middle. Usually that includes mild lighting, soothing sounds, and calming textures, Snoezelen rooms are stress-free areas that assist cut back nervousness, however additionally they have interaction and stimulate customers with sensory inputs designed to advertise independence by giving youngsters a way of management over their setting.
Paso Robles occupational therapists and different interventionists recognized their objectives for the area, primarily based on the sensory wants of their scholar inhabitants. Then, they evaluated a variety of distributors to discover a accomplice who might assist them execute their imaginative and prescient.
With a staff of Snoezelen and sensory setting specialists on workers, Faculty Specialty emerged because the clear alternative. “Their skill to grasp our mission and imaginative and prescient was second to none,” Wahlberg mentioned. “We realized we’d discovered a accomplice to assist us flip our imaginative and prescient right into a actuality.”
Objectives for the Snoezelen Surroundings
Paso Robles serves many youngsters on the autism spectrum who’ve very totally different sensory wants.
“A few of them are underresponsive to stimuli and search out extra sensory enter,” mentioned occupational therapist Kerry Schmidt, “whereas others are overresponsive—and being in an everyday classroom may be overstimulating for them.”
District leaders wished to create a flexible multisensory setting that might adapt to what college students required, with sensory furnishings and tools that catered to every of those wants. “We wished the room to be very intentional,” Wahlberg mentioned, “and never simply used for youths to take a break. We already had different areas for that, the place youngsters can climb or play as wanted.”
Wahlberg and her colleagues wished an area the place workers may lead college students within the intentional use of apparatus for self-regulating actions primarily based on their particular wants, in order that after solely 5 or ten minutes within the room, they had been able to rejoin their friends for common instruction. “We wished to maximise college students’ time at school,” she defined.
Faculty Specialty Account Managers Lexi Levanduski and Alessandra Pucci labored with district leaders to design an setting that was well-suited to their necessities.
The undertaking was facilitated by Faculty Specialty Studying Surroundings Specialist Ken Mueller, who served as a liaison between the district and the design staff. “It was actually a staff strategy,” Mueller mentioned. “Everybody did what they wanted to make this a profitable undertaking.”
Options resembling bubble tubes with coloured lights, a platform swing for vestibular enter, stress rollers for proprioceptive enter, and a musical positioning cushion that provides youngsters a vibroacoustic expertise by surrounding them with consolation, sound, and delicate vibrations once they sink into the cushion assist college students who’re sensory seekers. Interactive panels that reply when youngsters contact them assist them study trigger and impact whereas exerting management over their setting.
Mellow music and slowly rocking on the platform swing assist calm overstimulated youngsters. “We picked an array of merchandise that may profit a variety of scholars and desires,” Pucci mentioned, “so irrespective of who was utilizing the room, there was an space for every sort of scholar.”
Setting College students Up for Success
One of many key design challenges the Faculty Specialty staff confronted was the presence of built-in cupboards inside the room that couldn’t be moved. Nevertheless, the design staff turned this impediment into a bonus by utilizing the cupboards to create a ‘lending library’ of sensory supplies that academics might borrow to be used of their lecture rooms. The cupboards additionally doubled as a tactile wall, with every paw print custom-made to function totally different textures—offering college students with one other significant sensory expertise.
These things embrace gross motor tools for academics to create an impediment course inside their classroom; nice motor instruments resembling adaptive crayons, paint brushes, and scissors for youngsters who wrestle with nice motor abilities; and adaptive communication instruments.
With the lending library, “academics can take a look at objects to satisfy college students’ wants the place they’re,” Wahlberg famous.
The Snoezelen sensory room was accomplished in February 2025, and already Wahlberg and her colleagues have observed an affect. Having an deliberately designed area to carry college students once they want assist in self-regulating reduces the period of time they will’t concentrate on instruction.
“Regulation is so essential not only for college students with disabilities, however for all college students,” Wahlberg concluded. “We’re attempting to show college students these abilities that function a basis for studying.” With the brand new Snoezelen multisensory setting, “we’ve seen a number of success in a brief period of time. After only some minutes on this room, college students return to the classroom able to study. We’re setting them up for achievement within the classroom.”
Making a sensory area in your faculty truly helps help college students in spending extra tutorial time at school. A well-equipped multisensory room permits college students to hone in on the precise sort of self-regulation or stimulation they want, which additionally permits them to get again to class in much less time. Uncover how you can design a multisensory area tailor-made to your faculty’s particular wants with the assistance of our Inspiration Gallery.