Retirees build desks for students stuck at home learning remotely

On most school days, distance learning gives Luther Burbank Elementary School fourth grade teacher Sophia Nguyen a unique glimpse into her students’ worlds.

The small, computer screen windows on Zoom show the area in a home where students work, whether it’s quiet or chaotic, whether students are alone or among siblings also trying to learn, and whether they are sitting in a chair at a workstation.

Many are not at a desk. Or even in a chair. Students often sit on couches or the floor with computers on their laps.

Since mid-March when every school campus in Sonoma County was shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic, a workable study station at home has never been more important. Desks are no longer just for completing a couple of hours of homework, they are a key place students can identify themselves as learners, educators say.

In a time of unprecedented upheaval, something as simple as a desk of one’s own can make a huge difference for a student, Burbank fifth and sixth grade teacher Ross Hause said.

“A desk means more than it might have meant in traditional learning,” he said. “It’s a piece of normalcy, one extra little piece to make at-home learning like ’Oh I’m not at school, but I’ve got a desk.’ “

“To have a desk that they can sit at instead of doing it on their bed or these makeshift spaces, it’s like when you go to the library or coffee shop, you feel more studious,” he said.

Enter Joe Brewer and his wife, Chris Nota, and Ed Biglin and his wife, Mary Rychly. After Brewer caught wind of a similar project in Maryland called “Desks by Dads,” the retired educator decided to start a similar desk-building push in Sonoma County.

Brewer, who started his teaching career at Burbank four decades ago, reached out to principal Debi Cardozo and asked: Might any Bengals need a desk? Perhaps a chair?

Indeed, she said. Of the approximately 330 students at Burbank, about 80 percent qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch.

“Some of our families don’t have dedicated space for distance learning and that is really helpful for our kids,” she said.

On Friday, six Luther Burbank students received that dedicated space, thanks to the handiwork of Brewer, Nota, Biglin and Rychly, plus some supplies donated by Lowe’s Home Improvement in Cotati.

One of those desk and chair combinations went to Giovanni Figueroa, a fourth grader in Nguyen’s class, who said through an interpreter that his desk will go next to the couch at home.

Another desk went to sixth grader Johan Casillas. No longer will he log into Hause’s class while sitting on the couch with his laptop balanced on a pillow on his lap.

“I really appreciate when the community comes and helps us,” Casillas said. “Because right now it’s a difficult time and I really appreciate when they come and help me with this new desk.“

That’s the part that moved Hause — that a group of retirees with varied backgrounds took up tools for the kids at Burbank. And it made him want to pick the right recipients.

“I wanted the person using it to use it with the love and heart as a learner that was used by the hands that made it,” he said.

The group’s bounty has only grown in the weeks since they put their project, dubbed Seniors For Students, together. A call to their Oakmont neighborhood’s Nextdoor group got them two more members, a donation of balance ball chairs and a bunch of gently used office chairs.

“It’s fun for us,” Brewer said of the handiwork. “This gives them a chance to have their own possession and have some sort of buy-in to school and the value of school.”

Brewer and Biglin do much of the construction in a makeshift shop at Brewer’s place while Nota and Rychly are tasked with finishing work — sanding, sealing, staining and painting. Each piece cost about $35 to make, depending on which pattern they chose.

Moving forward, the group hopes to rely on donated materials and volunteered time.

“We are as amateur as you get,” said Biglin, a retired professor of English and African literature at St. Mary’s College.

“My sense is that distance learning is hard for a lot of kids, for a variety of reasons, one of which is you are sitting staring at a screen for long periods of time. Attention wanders for the best of us under the best of circumstances, and if you have to do that in an uncomfortable situation or on the floor with other things going on in the room or with trying to keep a computer on your lap while you look at papers and books — it’s hard,” he said. “A desk is an orderly place.”

Nguyen described it as eliminating one more thing that makes distance learning difficult.

“It’s really important to set up a space where you can actually learn,” she said. “For a student who does not have room to themselves or a desk to sit in, it’s really difficult for them to associate a specific space with learning because they are constantly moving from place to place. The desk really sets them up for success.”

On Friday, Hause scrambled around the grass near the Burbank staff parking lot, taking pictures and videos of students picking their desks, sitting in their new chairs and, eventually, loading them into their family car.

As he photographed Casillas, sitting, hands folded, at his new workstation, a visitor could see the sixth grader’s smile even behind his coronavirus-safe face mask.

Hause knew he picked the right kid.

“I really wanted to make sure that whoever got this desk would love this desk. I wanted this desk to be loved,” Hause said. “Everything he has showed me this year, this kid is one of those kids.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.