Former Pinellas teacher's estate funds sensory playground for special needs students
PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Kids with special needs get to experience the joy of a day at the playground thanks to a generous gift from a longtime teacher in Pinellas County.
A brand new sensory playground at Nina Harris Exceptional Student Education Center in Pinellas Park isn't your typical playground. Instead of slides and swings, students can make music, feel the vibrations of the instruments, and have different sensory needs met.
"You will see the students feel instantly connected to the equipment," said Principal Jacqueline Cassidy. "They will start to play little melodies, even if it's their first or second time out on the equipment. They become more relaxed."
The playground is a blessing from former longtime teacher, Christine Stuckey and her husband, Mike. Though they've both passed away, they set aside tens of thousands in their estate to provide sensory areas for students.
More than 220 students go to the school. Many communicate non-verbally. About a third are on the autism spectrum. With each strike of a mallet on the instruments, students find peace, balance, and satisfaction.
"If you have a need that needs to be met, whether it's tactile or auditory or movement and you don't have a way to meet that need, it can result in behaviors," Cassidy said. "It fulfills the need they have to have in order to stimulate their brain to move on to the next task they have in school."
Monday's ribbon-cutting was just phase-one. Soon, there will be two more sensory experiences in the gymnasium and media center.
"We're going to have speakers mounted to be playing the appropriate music," Cassidy said, describing the sensory media center. "We will have a marble wall and a marble wall is for tactile sensory needs. We will have a LEGo wall so they can build and then we are going to have two maker station tables that have adaptive materials in them such as scissors and raised line paper that helps them to stay within the lines or stay on the paper where the teachers have indicated."
Meanwhile, chimes, melodies, and beats at the playground allow students to express what they feel in a way that words cannot.
It's music to teachers' ears. It's healing for students.
"It helps them in their learning, it helps them grow, it helps them to be self-advocates and that's what we are here for is to ensure that our students are growing," Cassidy said.
The other two sensory areas should be completed within the next 8 weeks.
