Have portable desk, will travel

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on July 04, 2008

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction, Virginia Woolf once wrote.

Likewise, a student should have a little space of his or her own to do homework.

Learning that some students are living in crowded conditions and don't have a quiet place to work, outgoing Superintendent Jere Hochman and administrator Wendy Kohler asked Amherst Regional High School shop teacher Stewart Olson whether students in his wood technology class could design a portable desk.

Seniors Christopher Lafley and Christopher Gere produced the best design and constructed 20 desks, with a $1,000 grant from Amherst Education Foundation. The next step is figuring out how to distribute them to students who need them.

Gere, who is helping build houses on an Indian reservation in Montana this summer, said by cell phone that he and Lafley enjoyed working with the constraints they were given by the administrators.

"I thought they came out pretty well, better than I thought they were going to at some points," said Lafly, who is working at an orchard in New Salem this summer, and spent up to two hours a day during his senior year making the desks.

Hochman and Kohler told the class that there were students living with five brothers and sisters in one room and not enough space to call their own and quietly study.

The desk should be able to fold up and fit under a bed or a sofa, they were told, and it should have doors surrounding it, so that a student could work without being distracted.

"To have a full-size desk wasn't appropriate because in some cases, they didn't have chairs," Olson said.

"I said, 'OK, let's see who comes up with the best design from all the known information.'"

Students voted on Lafley's and Gere's design as best meeting the specifications. "It was cool to see the finished thing," Gere said.

"It seemed to fit the criteria really well," Olson said of the Lafley's and Gere's prototype. Folded up, the lightweight desks resemble an oversized briefcase, with handles for easy portability.

Olson said Lafley, who is going to Lehigh University to study engineering in September, took the lead in completing the 20 desks.

"To do something productive for the school and to leave something - these guys are great," Olson said.

Hochman, who began his new job of superintendent of the Bedford Central School System, on July 1, was demonstrating how to use the well-made desks to interested groups, including the Amherst School Committee, in his final days in Amherst. The desks got universally positive reviews.

"I have to say that Jere was really supportive of technology education and how it can support all students," Olson said.

"We all live in a world where technology is all around us and we're paying more and more for things without doing it ourselves or at least being knowledgeable consumers. Those are the things we teach in technology education."

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.