Leading Sensory-Focused Labs
Desiree at Deer Creek
Intermediate School
“It was everything I had been trying to
build — done right.”
The Quiet Room Where Everything Changes
By the time the bus pulls up outside Deer Creek Intermediate School, Desiree already knows whether the afternoon will go smoothly. One of her students—nonverbal, autistic, prone to self-injury when overwhelmed—stands firm in the hallway. He will not board the bus until one thing happens first. "Calm room,” he says, carefully. Then: “Bus.” For Desiree, this is not defiance, it is communication. And the school’s Action Based Learning Sensory Lab is where everything begins to make sense.
Desiree teaches students with severe and profound disabilities at Deer Creek Intermediate.
Many of Desiree's students cannot tolerate the cafeteria, the playground, or even traditional physical education classes. Noise overwhelms them. Transitions escalate behaviors. Standard school environments that are designed for efficiency can feel punishing.
The lab did not begin as a district initiative or a glossy capital project. It began with a parent and a determined educator. A family had helped fund a transition center for students with disabilities. There was money left over. Did Desiree have an idea?
At the time, she was already sketching plans for a sensory room—scrolling through online catalogs, trying to piece together something meaningful. Then her principal mentioned Action Based Learning. Desiree recognized it instantly. With her principal’s support and encouragement, the lab was installed just before winter break.
When students walked in for the first time, one of them looked around, stunned, and said: “Merry Christmas!!” Desiree filmed the moment. She still keeps the video.
The lab is not recreational and it is not a reward. It is instructional infrastructure. Students swing for vestibular input, climb, balance, row, and carry weighted objects to regulate transitions. The work is intentional and individualized—less a rotation of stations than a living sensory diet tailored to each child.
Desiree’s students use the lab twice a day, often for 30 to 45 minutes at a time. When weather cancels recess, the lab becomes their movement space. When behaviors escalate in the classroom, the lab becomes a safe alternative—not a hallway, not isolation, but support.
Before the lab, transitions were explosive: aggression was frequent and communication stalled. After the lab, something changed. One student who once struggled to wait his turn learned to sit calmly while a timer counted down. Another began initiating communication—asking to be pushed on the swing, requesting “more,” tolerating stops and changes in direction. A weighted sensory item became a bridge between school and home, carried carefully onto the bus each afternoon. These are not small victories. In special education, they are everything.
Desiree’s classroom exists because of behavior, not cognition. Her students are labeled “severe and profound” not because of what they cannot learn, but because of how intensely they experience the world.
She tracks data constantly—behavior plans, IEP goals, communication benchmarks. She knows the numbers reflect progress. But numbers cannot capture what it means for a child to feel safe in their own body.Public recognition, however, has been harder to come by. Many teachers still do not know the room exists.This is a familiar story in special education: transformative work happening quietly, without spotlight, carried by educators who make time because students need it—not because it fits neatly into a schedule.“I saw it as a student need,” Desiree said simply. “So I made the time.”
A Calling, Not a Job
Desiree discovered special education early. In high school, she worked alongside a peer with autism—attending basketball games together, sharing daily life. That friendship shaped her path. She earned her degree in special education and began teaching at 20. She has worked in therapeutic schools, early intervention centers, and transdisciplinary teams alongside occupational, physical, and speech therapists. She has trained therapy horses. She has named her dog after a former student. Special education, she says, is not something she does, it is something she is.
This spring, Desiree will leave Deer Creek to help open a new therapeutic early-intervention school serving medically fragile children—many still on waiting lists years long. The decision was not easy for Desiree. However, Her students will remain, the lab will remain, and her aides, trained alongside her, will carry the work forward. Impact, she believes, should outlast any one person.