Buying Desk and Chairs for Your Classrooms
Of all the different things that a school administrator is charged with doing, providing their students with a positive atmosphere in which to learn is among the most important. This includes hiring the right teachers, providing safe and climate controlled classrooms and buildings and of course the right school furniture.
While those of you who look back on your school days and barely remember what the school furniture was like might not realize it, every piece of school furniture has to be carefully selected. How the students feel about their classrooms and their level of comfort can have a major impact on how well they do on a day to day basis in class. Classrooms that are bright and cheerful are far more encouraging than those that are drab, colorless and have old, worn out and uncomfortable furniture.
At the same time, if the classrooms are stocked with furniture that is overly bright or busy it can easily distract the students from the task at hand, especially the younger ones. When you are considering buying new furniture for your classrooms you will need to keep in mind more than appearance however, you must consider the right size for the age of the students, overall comfort as students are going to be spending several hours each day at their desks and durability.
The last thing you need to do is buy school furniture that is not going to last for a number of years. With budgets shrinking constantly and the school boards always looking for more ways to cut expenses, the last thing you want to do is spend a large chunk of your budget on furniture that is going to fall apart and has to be replaced within a few short years.
Of all the furniture you will be buying for your school perhaps the one thing that will get the most use and abuse is the student’s desks and chairs. In a recent study it was found that students ages 13-18 spend approximately 80% of their school day sitting down at their desks. With this in mind, you are going to need to find chairs that offer a compromise between comfort and durability.
Today you will find that you have three basic choices of materials for student seats, these are wood, soft plastic and hard plastic. Wood is perhaps the lesser of the choices as it tends to be more expensive and may not have the durability you need. Both hard and soft plastic offer many years of life, but you will find that soft plastic is a little more flexible and as such is likely to provide an extra level of comfort that the other two materials will not.
In student chairs you are likely to find that all legs and framework are made from 14, 16 or 18 gauge steel. In order to get the strongest legs, you should look for chairs with 14 gauge steel as in this instance the lower the number the thicker and stronger the steel is and consequently the longer your chairs are going to last.
When it comes to choosing the size of your new chairs, you should look for chairs that allow the average child in the age group you are buying them for to sit with his back against the chair and his feet flat on the floor. This is the optimum position for proper back support and will increase attention and reduce fidgeting. Of course there will always be some that will have their feet dangling, you have to try and hit a happy median that fits the majority of your students.
As for desks and tables, you are again going to find that table tops come in two basic materials, laminate covered wood and all plastic. The laminate tops are the least expensive and will resist minor damage. They are easy to keep clean as pen and pencil marks will clean up with soap and water as will fingerprints and minor spills such as paint from that last art project, but the laminate can be scratched with sharp objects.
Solid plastic tops are made to stand up to a lot of use and abuse by your students as they are designed to be very hard to damage. However, you may find that desks and tables with solid plastic tops are out of your budget. At Integrity Furniture you will find a large selection of desk and chairs made from superior materials at prices that are not going to break your budget, yet will provide years of service.
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