Photos: Flexible Furniture for Student Spaces
The Enterprise — Elizabeth Floyd Mair
Curved, puzzle-like desks can be fitted together for group work or moved apart for individual pursuits. Flexible furniture like this — at a cost of about $2 million for portions of all seven district schools — is part of Guilderland’s proposed $43 million capital project.
The Enterprise — Elizabeth Floyd Mair
Kids in Trish McLean’s fourth-grade class at Pine Bush Elementary School are trying out the reconfigurable, movable furniture that is part of the district’s proposed capital project. The furniture includes soft ottoman-like pieces that can used as either a chair, as the boy in the center is doing, or as a table for a student sitting on a carpet; and backless stools that can twirl and lean, seen at right.
The Enterprise — Elizabeth Floyd Mair
Fourth-grade students use their Chromebooks at new desks that can be raised so they can work standing up, rather than sitting, as they choose. The desks are part of the model flexible furniture in the Pine Bush Elementary classroom of teacher Trish McLean, left. If voters approve a proposed $43 million capital project, students in a portion of classrooms at all of Guilderland’s seven schools will get this furniture, for $1,955,731. The flexible furniture gives the students ownership of the space, McLean said. She added, “This is their classroom as much as it is mine.”