Ready, Set,....Find a Seat

Funded Aug 3, 2019

I don't think I can ever relay to you the pride and self-confidence your gift has given to some of my students. Your stools arrived a few weeks into our school year, but were awaited with tremendous anticipation. None of my students had ever seen or had the chance to try out a wobbly stool. If you can remember or imagine the excitement surrounding a young child on the day of a special event, you would then know the feeling in our classroom the day we unpacked your boxes.

To start, I placed the stools around our Guided Reading table; I wanted to give all of my students an opportunity to use a stool, while being able to watch the interaction between learning, attention and focus, and movement. I was not expecting the match between student and wobbly chair to be so apparent! For some students, a calmness seemed to radiate and take over, along with a newly found sense of empowerment. For other students, the active movement seemed to take away from focus and attention. From here, I let the students who gained calmness, productivity and focus take a wobbly stool with them as they moved throughout our classroom: back and forth from the Guided Reading table to his/her desk and anywhere in our classroom.

Your wobbly stools have given our classroom one other gift; throughout the day, my students are incredibly willing to share and take turns with your wobbly stools. So, you have helped my students begin to understand how they learn and helped my students begin to learn to think about the needs of others.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Maddry