Bad Blogger

Yeah well I'm not being very consistent here.  Sorry about that.  I'm not sure what it is, but none of us seem to have the spare time we did in years past.

Enough apologies.

So a few weeks ago the Guidance Guy sent out an email about these cushions they had purchased that were supposed to help kids, particularly those with ADHD, focus.  They are made of plastic, somewhat semi-inflated, with teeth on the side you place on the chair.  Basically you give them to a kid, they use it on their seat, and they focus more.  I actually tried it myself and it is nearly impossible to slouch with this thing on your chair.  You do have to wiggle a tiny bit all the time to stay somewhat balanced, and you tend to lean forward.  

Well I have some real live wire kids this year so I thought is give it a try.  Guidance was basically looking for some so us to try these and get data on the kids to see if there was any change in behavior and academics.  I sent an email but was rebuffed at first as they wanted to give them to team leaders first and have them used through a team so they could follow a kid throughout the day.  Since I'm teaching two grades this year, I'm not tied to a team (which has its pluses and minuses.)

Except very few team leaders seemed interested.

So lucky me got one of these cushions to use and see how they work.

I basically picked one kid in each class and told them that we were doing an experiment to see if these cushions helped them concentrate more.  What I wasn't counting on was that all the kids decided that they wanted to be the "tester" so I'm having to rotate each week.  

But here is the amazing thing.  These things work like a charm.

Honestly after the first day I was bowled over by these things.  Kids who never stayed in their seats are sitting down and working.  They aren't tapping pencils.  They aren't digging through their papers and fiddling.  They are WORKING.  It is just amazing.  I talked with the few other teachers that were trying these and they had the same results.

I want a class set now.

P.S.  Someone asked for a picture, so here's the link to Amazon that our guidance sent us.

Magic Seat Cushions

Be sure to read some of the comments from readers who also had experiences with these.