Crews prepare Union High classrooms for returning students

Published 11:08 am Thursday, August 31, 2017

By Ted Yoakum

New desks, seats and shelving? Check.

New painting and carpeting? Check.

New state-of-the-art instructional technology? Check.

The only feature still missing from the batch of newly renovated social studies classrooms at Dowagiac Union High School are the students who be taking advantage of the new improvements. That problem will be solved Tuesday, when ninth through 12th-grade learners return to the school, fresh off a slew of interior and exterior renovations.

Before the teenagers begin zooming back and forth in the hallways next week, crews responsible for the transformation of the high school’s east wing were hard at work preparing the 10 renovated classrooms for incoming students. On Monday, the last batch of furniture arrived on site, which crews have been assembling and installing throughout this week.

The new furnishings include desks, which sport a white plastic top with orange trim, paired with black student chairs — a fitting color scheme for the home of the Chieftains. Teachers also have their own chair and desk, along with shelves and storage units that they may use to collect homework assignments or to store classroom materials.

The name of the game with the new furniture is mobility, said Superintendent Paul Hartsig, who has overseen the high school renovation over the last several months.

“Everything is on wheels, except for the chairs,” Hartsig said. “Teachers can move the furniture anywhere they want around classroom, or may even take some down to the media center if they wanted to. It’s a very versatile set up.”

For example, instructors may start off the class period by arranging the student desks in a traditional lecture-based format, and later shift them into a circle to facilitate group-based discussions. They may also arrange the desks into 4-by-4 squares to allow the students to work in small teams, Hartsig said.

In addition to two new traditional white boards, the renovated classrooms also sport touchscreen displays that replace the old overhead projectors. Instructors can use the monitors to display everything from PowerPoint presentations to instructional videos on YouTube, Hartsig said.

“The screens are more cost effective and longer lasting than overhead projectors, since you don’t have to constantly replace things like burned out bulbs,” he said.

While crews wrapped up construction on the new spaces, teachers returned to the school to prepare for the new year. Several instructors who will be using the renovated classrooms have already arranged the new furniture to their liking, as well as moved into their new workspaces, which are now contained in separate rooms to allow more space inside classrooms for instruction.

The new classrooms are the first batch to receive improvements through the district’s $16-million Union High renovation project, funded through the $37 million bond issue passed in 2015, which will also pay for renovations to the football field and four elementary buildings in the coming years. The first phase of construction, which kicked off in June, included the renovation of the 10 classrooms as well as the installation of new windows and exit doors, repaving of the school’s parking lots, installation of new ceiling tiles, lighting, fire suppression and alarms in the building hallways and the kick-off of construction of the new competition gym on the building’s west side.

Work on the initial phase of building wraps up this week. Throughout the fall and spring, crews will continue to work on additional classrooms, beginning with the remaining rooms on the east end of the building, which includes the English and math rooms. During this period, areas where crews are currently working will be walled off, and classrooms will be moved into new temporary spaces as needed, Hartsig said.

“We will try to keep distractions down to a minimum,” he said.

Work will progress through next summer, and is expected to wrap up completely in late 2018.

Crews have also been working on the first set of improvements to nearby Chris Taylor Alumni Field this summer, where they installed new ADA-compliant bleachers on the home and visitors side of the football field. The seating is now fully installed, and will be ready for the Chieftain’s first home game of the season Thursday night.

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