PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — In early January, Robin Norsworthy couldn’t quite put her finger on what was missing in her fifth-grade classroom at the Zippel Elementary School in Presque Isle.
The teacher had a room full of students working busily on their assignments, and the work only stopped when they pushed their chairs back to head outside for recess.
It was then that Norsworthy realized what was going on — the noise level in the classroom decreased dramatically when her students no longer had chairs to push across the wooden floor.
It was in January that Norsworthy’s class began taking part in a pilot project funded by the United Way of Aroostook that allowed the students to sit on stability balls in the classroom instead of chairs. Dubbed the WittFitt project, the unique partnership between public health organizations and schools replaced chairs with stability balls in 13 classrooms throughout Aroostook County.
During a recent press conference at Zippel Elementary School and the Dr. Levesque Elementary School in Frenchville, officials announced plans to have the data gathered by the original project partners professionally analyzed. The $5,000 project is being funded by The Aroostook Medical Center, Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and the United Way of Aroostook. Houlton Regional Hospital and Northern Maine Medical Center are supporters of the project.
Earlier this week, Norsworthy said she and her students had a wonderful experience using the stability balls. After receiving parental permission, she began training the students how to properly sit and move on their new inflated seats.
“The students quickly learned that they were not toys,” she said. “They understood that this was a tool that could help them improve their posture, provide better core strength, improve their handwriting and more.”
The stability balls used in the classroom are similar to the type used at the gym and in the home for stretching and strengthening exercises. The latex-free balls used in schools have legs on the bottom to keep them from rolling.
“When we began the project, we anticipated that the stability balls would improve posture, strengthen muscles, sharpen attention span and ultimately, boost academic performance,” said Reegan Brown, WittFitt project coordinator and community education specialist for Healthy Aroostook. “We collected a large amount of data, but more work needs to be done with it before we can truly understand the project’s impact.”
Norsworthy said her students loved sitting and moving on them, and they were also allowed to bounce slightly on their seats. Students who misbehaved or abused the privilege found themselves sitting on their chairs for a week. At the end of the school year in June, each student had to deflate their ball.
“The students were sad over that,” said Norsworthy, adding that she inflated the balls again in September for her new students to use. “I cannot think of one negative of this project.”
Martha Bell is the Aroostook public health district coordinator working with the Aroostook County Action Program. She said there has been growing interest in the integration of stability balls in classrooms throughout the state and on a national level. Bell said she thinks the data will show the positive effect seen by teachers such as Norsworthy.
The next stage of the project will be having the data gathered in the classrooms professionally analyzed. Healthy Aroostook, the coordinator of the initiative, collected data from teachers, parents and students throughout the project. The data that will be analyzed consists of multiple surveys completed by students, teachers and parents. The surveys assessed students’ posture, attentiveness, ability to stay on task, handwriting, attitude toward school and other factors.
The project partners believe the in-depth analysis of the data will support some of the results that have been noted in other parts of the country. If so, more classrooms may be outfitted with the balls in the future. Final results will be shared with participating schools, project partners and others who may want to become involved.
I thought those types of things were for people with
intestinal health concerns , not active school aged youngsters.
Despite the undoubted benefits during this experiment, in the long run this is actually a potentially negative thing to do to these kids. This is because unless they use these things for all the subsequent years of schooling, they will eventually, and undoubtedly suffer a separation anxiety at some point when they reach a class / grade where these balls are not available. Some kids with addictive personalities will suffer more than others, and it will occur in the crucial first few weeks of class when getting settled and getting a head-start is so important. This rationale is the same reason that athletes do not wear excessive joint braces all the time in practice unless needed, and why eye doctors don’t overprescribe lenses to a point better than normal – the subjects become addicted and without the crutch they can suffer. Also, there are probably reasons that 99.9% of all classrooms in the world use chairs, not the least of which is that it does not cost $5,000 to outfit a classroom with them.
The report is a little unclear as to what the $5000 is being spent on, but it appears to be for an analysis of the data the WittFitt program generated, not for the program itself.
The Romans defined the classroom, yes and chairs were used, good Gawd, who allows this nonsense in Aroostook County, In a couple of years, the balls will be filling space in some landfill, good grief, set them in chairs.
http://www.ehow.com/way_5294812_using-balls-school-instead-chairs.html
There are many websites that tell about stability balls, but I’d be more inclined to believe the ones that weren’t sponsored by the folks who sell the things.
My classrooms had to be absolutely quiet or I couldn’t function. In later years I couldn’t speak to an audience while people were moving around in the room. I still can’t. Any movement or noise makes me forget what I am doing. Just a couple of years ago while on stage at the Camden Opera House I had to walk behind the side curtains into the wings and ask the Master of Ceremonies to stop talking because it distracted me.
Tim Sample always amazed me because he could carry on in a room that resembled a beehive and never miss a beat.
So I can identify with students who need peace and quiet to study. — Or do anything that requires thought. And if sitting on a rubber ball does the job, so be it.
The Almost Perfect Woman, who taught little ones for 25 years, says that the balls are used in Killington, Vermont, and that they worked great for her friend’s kids. She says that the balls are ideal for kids that squirm and wiggle all the time. In her learned opinion, they are not addictive.
The humble Farmer
“In her learned opinion, they are not addictive”….. So if no difference is noticed in subsequent years and no negative results are perceived from kids not having the balls in subsequent years to illustrate a withdrawal…. it apparently doesn’t matter if you use them or not as far as can be measured? Using those ergonomically-correct kneeling chair things was all the rage in a few classrooms years ago too, but they more or less went the way of rubiks cubes. This whole ball thing is a tried & failed fad from a few years ago: http://www.enewsbuilder.net/hellman/e_article001041078.cfm?x=b11,0,w
I tried a kneeling chair in my home office and hated it. Hard on the knees. Thankfully disappeared in a garage sale.
The use of stability balls in a classroom can have a huge impact. This does work.