Thursday, February 22, 2024 | Making the Grade
‘Really beautiful and really nice’: Hinsdale grad designs sensory hallway BY BOB AUDETTE Vermont News & Media
KRISTOPHER RADDER — VERMONT NEWS & MEDIA
Brattleboro Reformer | Bennington Banner | Manchester Journal
Students at Hinsdale Elementary School try out a new sensory floor design that was created by Trinity Stroud, a senior at Hinsdale Middle High School, as part of her Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO).
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Students can learn to weld or how to be an administrator in a town office, they can rebuild a baseball dugout, work with a veterinarian or start a career in health care. Trinity Stroud, Class of 2023, who is pursuing a degree in graphic design at UMass-Dartmouth, has spent the last year working at Elite Vinyl in Hinsdale, exploring her passion while getting school credits and a paycheck. “I did my ELO because I didn’t know if I wanted to do graphic design or not,” said Stroud. “I realized I really liked it and as [Elite Vinyl owner] Jason [Ashcroft] said, ‘That’s where the money is.’” “She worked on quite a lot of projects,” said Ashcroft, during a visit to Hinsdale Elementary School to show off their work on a sensory hallway. “It gets her a little expe-
rience under her belt so when she gets out there in the real world, she knows what’s really going on.” The skills Stroud learned on the job included computer design, tinting windows, applying vinyl and vehicle wraps, and using an industrial cutter. All of those skills came in handy when Stroud decided she wanted to give back to her school by designing and applying vinyl designs in a long hallway in the elementary school. “For kids that are very dysregulated and have trouble calming and getting ready to learn, a sensory hallway is a way for them to move their bodies and get the wiggle out and become more regulated so that they’re able to come back into the classroom where they’re ready to learn,” said Deb Carrier, who has spent 34 years teaching in Hinsdale, the last two as a kindergarten teacher. Carrier received a $1,500 grant from the Hinsdale Educational
