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Bishop Joseph C. Bambera blessed a new sensory room for students at Good Shepherd Academy in Kingston on Nov. 25, 2025.<\/p>\nKINGSTON \u2013 An LED bubble tube and a musical touch wall are just two of many items that students can interact with while visiting a new sensory room at Good Shepherd Academy in Kingston.<\/p>\n
The calming space is designed to help children relax, refocus, and build coping skills so they can return to class ready to learn.<\/p>\n
The new space \u2013 the first sensory room in the Diocese of Scranton\u2019s Catholic School System \u2013 was made possible through a generous grant from the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund.<\/p>\n
Bishop Joseph C. Bambera blessed a new sensory room for students at Good Shepherd Academy in Kingston on Nov. 25, 2025.<\/p>\n
After celebrating an all-school Mass on Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025, the Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, visited the room, prayed a special blessing, and sprinkled the space with holy water.<\/p>\n
\u201cAllow me to offer my words of thanks to all of you, the McGowan Foundation and all of you who had a hand in making this space possible,\u201d Bishop Bambera said. \u201cIt\u2019s incredible. We read more and more about opportunities like this in many schools. I\u2019m so proud that we have one here at Good Shepherd Academy. It\u2019s an incredible space and it is a calming space, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n
For Good Shepherd Academy principal Jim Jones, the sensory room represents the fulfillment of a long-held hope for his school, the largest Catholic elementary school in the Diocese of Scranton.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a dream of mine,\u201d Jones said. \u201cAfter COVID, many of our children were having a heightened sense of anxiety and tension, so we needed a place where our students could decompress.\u201d<\/p>\n
The room officially opened on Oct. 1, and it has been busy ever since.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have multiple children in there every day,\u201d Jones noted. \u201cOur I.I. (Individualized Instruction) students are in there continuously. We\u2019re so grateful for the McGowan Foundation for their support of Catholic education.\u201d<\/p>\n
The foundation funded the approximately $50,000 in structural and electrical elements of the project in full.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it was not for the McGowan Foundation, this would not be possible,\u201d Jones added. \u201cThey were gracious that they got behind our project 100 percent. They were on board from the get-go. They have been a blessing to Good Shepherd Academy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Installed in a quiet, second-floor area of the school, the new sensory room is filled with specialized visual, auditory, and tactile equipment designed to help students self-regulate, manage anxiety, and build coping skills.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bubble tower is one of the highlights,\u201d Jones said with a laugh. \u201cEverything is controlled by a cube. When you roll the cube, whatever color comes up, the lights change in the sensory room based on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to the technology, the school also incorporated special seating from a local vendor in Hanover Township, giving students comfortable, flexible options while they relax and engage with the equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving the students be able to go to a space where they can self-regulate and learn the necessary coping skills for both an academic setting and a real-life setting is going to have immeasurable effects on both their personal development as well as their academic development,\u201d Mary Siejak, who has taught Individualized Instruction at Good Shepherd Academy for ten years, said. <\/p>\n
Siejak, who primarily teaches mathematics to students who need an adapted curriculum, said she already sees the impact when she brings students into the new room.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I take them to the room, maybe in about 10 minutes, I notice a measurable difference in their ability to stay focused, not only on content, but then also to perform to their potential in the classroom,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
What makes the difference?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a nice quiet space. It is the resources that the McGowan Foundation put into the sensory room. Just having those elements,\u201d she added, noting that the room is designed to help regulate multiple senses in the body and allow students to become truly calm.<\/p>\n
While the sensory room is open on an as-needed basis to the entire student body, it is used most frequently by students in Good Shepherd\u2019s Individualized Instruction program. <\/p>\n
The new sensory room builds on Good Shepherd Academy\u2019s strong track record of innovation, including its S.T.R.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Religion, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) Discovery Room and expanded arts opportunities introduced in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KINGSTON \u2013 An LED bubble tube and a musical touch wall are just two of many items that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-46021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}