In Columbia — A hop, skip and a leap of faith

These paths are powerful tools for helping children manage their sensory needs while staying grounded in faith.”

Trisha Klausing MOT OTR/L, founder of Sacred Steps Sensory Paths

We’re always going to maintain the same high standards for everybody. But the way they get there will look different.”

Aimee Spicci

“Hop through the days of Creation. ... God saw that it was very good!”

“Follow the rainbow path from Noah’s Ark to the promise!”

“Jump from fish to fish to cross the Red Sea!”

“Jump out of the tomb. Match your footsteps to the prints of the cross!”

Students returning to Our Lady of Lourdes Interparish School (OLLIS) in Columbia this month will likely have more pep in their step and light in their souls.

Trisha Klausing MOT OTR/L, founder of Sacred Steps Sensory Paths (sacredstepssensorypaths.com), recently placed five Catholic faith-themed sensory paths in several of the school’s hallways.

“These paths are powerful tools for helping children manage their sensory needs while staying grounded in faith,” said Mrs. Klausing, a pediatric occupational therapist at a Catholic grade school in Ohio.

The sensory pathways — meandering trails of colorful vinyl decals permanently affixed to floors and walls throughout the school — encourage students to move, breathe, work on fine motor skills, pray, and think about their relationship with God and the Church.

These things “support students’ focus, self-regulation and spiritual growth through purposeful movement rooted in Scripture and Catholic tradition,” Mrs. Klausing stated.

Sensory paths combine such activities as walking, jumping, counting, breathing, and crossing over from left to right and back with their eyes, hands and feet.

They are especially useful for helping students — especially children with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or excess anxiety — decompress and channel their stress.

“I work with kids who have fine motor delays, any type of ADHD diagnosis, learning disabilities — just to help them be successful and independent at school,” Mrs. Klausing noted.

Sensory paths have long been recognized as “tools in the toolbox” for helping these and other students get the most out of their time at school.

Last year, Mrs. Klausing set out on a quest for a sensory path for the Catholic school where she works — a path that acknowledges God as Lord of the Universe.

“I couldn’t find any that related to the Catholic faith,” she noted. “So, I started creating my own, and it’s kind of taken off from there.”

While coming and going

Aimee Spicci, a learning specialist who’s head of OLLIS’s learning support team, was also searching for a Catholic sensory path.

“We had a couple of kindergarteners that needed some more sensory input and body proprioception,” she stated. “So, it was kind of a scramble: ‘What can we do right now to get that for them?’

“All the better if we could find something Catholic,” she said.

OLLIS Principal Katie Helfer Ed.D. and Assistant Principal Sara Blandford found Mrs. Klausing at the Sacred Steps table in the exhibit hall during the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) conference last spring.

“We were immediately sold on what she showed us,” said Mrs. Blandford. “It all just came together. So now, almost every hallway is going to have a sensory pathway for different age groups.”

The paths all start with a Bible verse.

Then, there are directions for students to follow, each designed to help with sensory regulation, emotional equilibrium and physical reinforcement of something worth knowing.

“Think of how Akeelah learned to spell ‘prestidigitate’ while skipping rope in ‘Akeelah and the Bee,’” said Mrs. Blandford. “Movement helps reinforce whatever you’re learning.”

“What your body does, your brain remembers,” said Mrs. Spicci.

The sensory paths incorporate themes such as the days of Creation, Jesus’s multiplying of the loaves and fishes, the cross and resurrection, the seven Sacraments and the Beatitudes.

“We try to incorporate faith into everything we have, so why not this, as well?” said Mrs. Blandford.

Students can use the paths to burn off some excess energy between classes, during restroom breaks or on their way back from recess.

Teachers can send kids who need a settle-down break out to the hallway to spend a few minutes on one of the sensory paths.

Students return to class relaxed, refreshed and ready to learn.

“Our hope is that it will translate positively into the classroom,” said Mrs. Blandford. “We hope the teachers and everyone else will see the benefits.”

Each sensory path is age-appropriate to the students in the grades accessed by the various hallways.

“It gives them a great outlet — especially our older kids,” Mrs. Blandford stated. “If they’re having a moment, it seems so punitive when we say, ‘Go out in the hallway.’

“But this gives an opportunity to be like, ‘Go out and walk the Beatitudes.’ And they get a little reflection time with that,” she stated.

“And sometimes, as we all know, we need breaks from other people,” said Mrs. Spicci. “Sometimes, we need a break from a group of people. Sometimes, you just need to be alone for a few minutes. This helps them make productive use of that time in a helpful manner.”

Some of the kindergarten and first-grade paths also spill over into the hallway to and from the cafeteria.

“So, that’s something students of any age can use to help get those wiggles out on the way back to class,” said Mrs. Blandford.

Part of something bigger

Mrs. Klausing said this was the first time she ever installed five sensory paths at one school.

“Some schools get one, maybe two. But five is really amazing,” she stated.

She said that whether it’s a recent development or due to better recognition, more students are being identified as having heightened emotions, difficulties staying focused, and other barriers to traditional learning.

“Kids have changed a lot since we adults were in school,” Mrs. Klausing stated. “We need to give them appropriate outlets for their energy and their sensory needs.”

Mrs. Blandford said one of the OLLIS Learning Support Team’s main goals in the past few years has been to make the school more welcoming and inclusive to more students.

“We want to be able to welcome those kiddos who maybe we had to turn away in the past,” she stated. “Or maybe someone who isn’t a traditional learner — they have a space here. And we’re great with that. And we’re learning along with them.”

One of Mrs. Blandford’s own children has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.

“There was a time when we wouldn’t have been able to accept him to come here,” she stated. “But this year, he was able to be here, because we were able to hire a second learning specialist.

“So he’s going to benefit from this, as well, in a more controlled, safer environment,” she said. “Which is really exciting!”

Mrs. Spicci has been teaching at OLLIS for 22 years, the past seven as a learning support specialist.

She emphasized that such efforts throughout the school mean more children will get to be educated in a thoroughly Catholic environment.

“When we started the program, we had several parents who were like, ‘We want to send our kids to Catholic school. We’re Catholic,’” she noted. “But there was no space for them.”

She spoke passionately through tears.

“Who says those kids are any less?” she asked. “They deserve to learn about God and be in God’s space, just as much as everybody else.”

“And that’s something we’ve been working really hard on,” said Mrs. Blandford.

When all of the brothers and sisters in a family get to go to Catholic school together, the whole family benefits.

“It’s exciting! They all get to be here together, instead of being in three different drop-off spaces and being in different backgrounds,” Mrs. Blandford stated.

Different paths

Mrs. Klausing includes a sunflower on all of the sensory paths she creates.

“It was my Mom’s favorite flower, and she passed away about a year ago,” she stated. “That’s how I honor her.”

She said fellow educators’ response to Sacred Steps Sensory Paths at the NCEA convention and other Catholic education conferences has been overwhelmingly positive.

“It’s clear that more and more schools are recognizing the need for sensory regulation tools — and are excited about faith-based approaches that support the whole child,” she said.

She emphasized that just because some students learn differently, it doesn’t have to mean they need to go to a different school.

“Especially when we’re talking about Catholic schools,” she said. “We’re supposed to be welcoming to everybody.”

Mrs. Spicci likened it to Jesus’s Parable of the Lost Sheep.

“We don’t leave one sheep behind! Right?” she said. “We don’t leave ’em behind. We welcome them into the flock.”

All the while, students of various backgrounds, skills and learning styles and their teachers spend each day learning from each other.

“We learn from kids who are not near-neurotypical,” said Mrs. Spicci. “We learn so much from them.”

Every member of the entire OLLIS faculty has been working to move beyond his or her comfort zone of traditional education.

“We have so many staff who are used to the very high-achieving, or the very neurotypical kids, who know that ‘I need to sit down,’ ‘I need to not talk,’ ‘I need to have my work done on time,” said Mrs. Blandford.

And yes, the school does need to maintain those standards.

“But how do you achieve that goal and allow for movement?” asked Mrs. Spicci. “How can we also allow for pro-preceptive needs? And allow for language needs? And allow for a break? We can’t sit in a desk all day.”

Mrs. Blandford said offering teachers more resources and more training in these areas helps everybody.

“In addition, I feel like we’re making a lot of headway with the parents really partnering with us and realizing that we’re not saying that ‘your kid is different’ and we’re not saying that we don’t want to help them,” she said.

“We emphasize the partnership,” she stated. “‘This is for your kid. This is for success. This is for the future.’”

“And the more we do that,” Mrs. Spicci added, “the more this becomes the new norm.”

OLLIS’s learning resource room is front and center in the school building “right in the middle of all the activities,” said Mrs. Spicci.

“We’re always going to maintain the same high standards for everybody,” said Mrs. Spicci. “But the way they get there will look different.

“The roadmap for each child can look different. That doesn’t mean that they won’t reach a standard. But, the way they get there is going to be different,” she said.

Mrs. Spicci is starting a peer-mentoring program at OLLIS this year for students who want to help their friends who need any degree of accommodation.

“Having a study partner or having an accountability partner, or someone they can just talk to who’s a peer, not their teacher,” said Mrs. Blandford.

“Be that person”

OLLIS’s callback between students and teachers is “God is good ... all the time.”

“He’s always here with us,” said Mrs. Blandford. “He’s with us when we’re offering help, and he’s with us when we’re accepting help. And I think there’s been a real culture shift, especially with our older kids, when it comes to accepting help.”

Mrs. Spicci asked for prayers for all of the children in school to be open to learning from each other and accepting each other as God created them.

Mrs. Blandford requested prayers for everyone to have an open heart — “to not let barriers inflict them in any way, to be the kind person, to say hi and just welcome everybody.”

“It doesn’t cost anything to be kind,” she stated. “So pray that maybe they can be that kind person that can make a change in someone’s life. It just takes one person. Why not be that person?”