School Furniture Blog

Although most students may not agree, recent studies suggest that longer days in school may be exactly what children need to get the most of their education. Additional time spent in class could offer kids a chance to study, interact more with their teachers and peers, and participate in some un-traditional activites making school more fun. Worthington Direct features classroom furniture, activity tables, storage cabinets and more designed to be more comfortable, durable and functional. With our children spending more time in school, the learning environment and its comfort takes on new importance.

Ferris Bueller’s worst nightmare might be the answer to bad grades and dismal test scores. CNN highlights a new trend – extending the length of the school day. The article reports that on average, students in the U.S. spend less time in the classroom than their counterparts in many other industrialized countries. Programs in Massachusetts and other states increase the number of hours per day that students spend in class, as well as the number of days – some programs have kids in school on Saturdays, and may have their summer vacations shortened. In some cases, students end up spending 50% more time in school than they would in traditional programs.

The argument that giving students more time to study will yield positive results is compelling, but let’s face it – not a lot of kids are going to be excited about tacking on another two hours’ worth of lectures about the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act. And extending the hours spent in the classroom could cut into after-school sports programs as well as daylight hours that kids could be spending outside at play – an important consideration, considering all of the talk about childhood obesity these days. (Read More)

Take Command of the Room with Strong Body Language 

What makes one presenter persuasive and powerful, and another weak and ineffective? Contrary to popular belief, the answer is not your content.

In his book Silent Messages, Albert Mehrabian reveals three elements that most influence an audience. According to his research, these three elements make an audience want to buy from you, promote you, hire you, and even want you as part of the team. In addition, Mehrabian ranked these elements in order of importance to the audience. Here’s what he found:

· Your verbal ability, or your content and knowledge about your topic,
counts for only 7 percent of the audience’s perception of you.

· Your vocal ability, or how you speak, including your tone, pitch and
inflection, counts for 35 percent of the audience’s perception of you.

· Your visual presence, or how you physically look while presenting, counts
for a whopping 55 percent of the audience’s perception of you.

This means audience members make snap decisions about your credibility and level of expertise based on how you look and sound, not on what you say. Amazing! That means your physical conduct and how you manage your body while communicating has more of an impact than what you actually say.

Granted, body language can only take you so far, and if you want people to be engaged with your presentation long-term, you will need to say something meaningful and your content will matter. But since body language sets up the initial perception, you need to know the following rules to communicate strong body language to your audience. Mastering these skills will give your message more meaning and impact leading your audience to act faster than ever before. (Read More)

When Canton parents learned their children’s preschool was moving to the old high school this fall, they quickly pledged to pitch in with the redecorating. They collected a wish list of books, toys, furniture, and electronics from teachers, and then went shopping on their own dime.

Now the parents are launching an even more ambitious campaign — raising as much as $100,000 for a handicapped-accessible playground for the preschool, which includes many autistic children.
In the suburbs south of Boston, active, education-focused parents frustrated with tight school budgets have taken matters into their own hands, accelerating fund-raising efforts that make car washes and bake sales look quaint. Where parents once opened up their checkbooks for team uniforms and field trips, today they help build computer labs, reinstate extracurricular clubs, and revive academic programs lost in budget cuts.

"The $2,000 bake sale, that’s just not enough anymore," said Jon Carson, the CEO of cMarket, a Cambridge-based Internet auction company whose largest and fastest-growing segment is K-12 education. The convenience and novelty of on line auctions, coupled with collectible and recreational bid items, often make them far more lucrative than live events, he said.

In December, the Sharon High School PTSO turned to cMarket to host an Internet auction that brought in $32,000, more than triple the event’s average yield. It was a windfall for a school whose budget has been stretched past the point of asking for educational frills.

"You would think new dictionaries for Spanish classes are a basic," said Dianne Needle, who organized the event. "Well, they’re not." Darlene Borre , who is spearheading the Canton effort, said private donations are an increasingly necessary supplement to crimped public school budgets.
"If it’s just the school doing it, that’s one thing," Borre said. "If the parents are involved, too, that’s another. We want the playground to be something the whole community can be proud of."

Education foundations still primarily award grants for enrichment programs that fall outside of the school budget, but more are financing core programs threatened by cutbacks and other educational nuts and bolts. "Extra has taken on a different meaning," said Carol Rosner, a Milton parent active in PTOs and the Milton Foundation for Education, which raises as much as $300,000 a year. "What once was extra is now a necessity."

For example, parents two years ago revived the Cohasset Education Foundation, which had fallen inactive, after a failed override vote. Believing they could no longer rely on residents to consistently support higher school budgets, they decided to pass the hat among themselves. In December, they raised $100,000 for a new computer lab.

But school officials’ requests for items previously covered in the budget can put education foundations and parents in an awkward position. Rosner said the Milton foundation, which has established an endowment and raises some $300,000 annually, has denied requests for defibrillators and an emergency phone system. (Read More)

It’s a concept that would make entertaining television. Take 14 top interior designers from Boston, hand each of them a small studio apartment, give them tight budgets and see what they can do. Better yet, make sure the project is for a good cause: providing housing for homeless men and women who are successfully reentering society.

This is exactly what’s happened at the South End’s Project Place, which moved into a new building at the corner of Washington and East Berkeley streets this week. The six-story facility houses two floors of affordable housing for formerly homeless people who have been improving their lives, have found jobs and are in need of a place to live.

These 14 “efficiency” apartments — studios that include kitchenettes and bathrooms — seem like sophisticated college dorm rooms. Instead of Farrah Fawcett posters and beer bottle collections, however, the interior design motifs are more urbane. That’s because each of these rooms has been designed by well-known Boston designers, many from the South End.

Heather G. Wells Ltd., Dennis Duffy’s Duffy Design Group and Terrat Elms are just some of the interior design companies that donated time, money, labor and goods to furnish and design affordable apartments in Project Place. The design effort, dubbed Adopt-A-Room, besides serving an admirable cause, could serve as a case study in inexpensive design for small spaces.

Each room is different, and each room reflects the tastes and styles of the designers that created them, noted Heather Wells, whose own modern design features soft colors and a “New England flavor.” “If you know the designers, [the rooms] do feel like them,” said Wells, a South End resident. “Going room by room … it’s a lot like how they did their own houses.”

The rooms are small, approximately 250 square feet in area, according to Suzanne Kenney, executive director of Project Place, though some are slightly larger and some are slightly smaller. Each room has a modern kitchenette and a relatively large bathroom. Each of the rooms is furnished with identical beds, dressers and desks, though most of the designers provided additional furniture.

The people who will be living in these newly designed rooms are people who “need a second chance,” explained Wells. The formerly homeless residents will be on their path to reentering society after struggling with unemployment and living in shelters and transitional treatment programs. They’ll be alcohol and drug free and employed, on the path toward fulltime employment. “These are folks who have made a commitment, who have gotten themselves back in the workplace,” said Kenney. (Read More)