Toulouse: Water cushion, desk bike, ottomans… what exactly are these new “flexible classes”? – 20 minutes

A spiked cushion filled with water to wriggle without moving from your chair (even if it means catching seasickness), rubber bands to stretch your feet during mental arithmetic, or even a desk bike to spend your excess water. energy while listening to the lesson. This incongruous furniture is not in a catalog for cool parents, it arrives for this back to school – at least everyone hopes so, deliveries are desired – in a dozen classes of
Toulouse whose teachers are volunteers for the educational experimentation of “flexible classes”.

Make no mistake, this is not pay-per-view school. It’s just a new way of occupying space. “More and more students have special needs, learning disabilities or difficulty concentrating,” explains Marion Lalane de Laubadère, the Education Assistant. This furniture can calm a very agitated child or promote his concentration ”.

No more designated space

Agnès Reyes, the director of the elementary school of Borderouge, is not to be convinced. As part of another program, for two years he has already had two bicycle-desks “which rotate from class to class as needed”. “Of course, the pupils cannot write while pedaling, but it is very effective during group activities, where the children must listen to the teacher while being passive,” she testifies.

The 26 (maybe more) students in a CM1-CM2 class at the school won’t just pedal. They are going to move up a gear with their poufs, their sofa, their big balls. “It is a particular pedagogy because it means that there will be no more assigned place in the class”. And that new lockers must still be installed since no student will be able to store them under his desk.

The experiment will be the subject of an educational review between the teachers and the town hall at the end of the school year.