Give Your Janitor A Break This Summer – Install Duralife Lockers®

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Lets talk about janitors, you know, those guys and gals, who are always there, on the ready with a sponge, broom or mop, just when you need them. They are in our schools all year long, available for any size clean up, taking care of the spills our kids make in the lunchroom, classroom and hallways. They go about their business undetected, coming out when needed. But do you know one of the ways they spend their summer (that coveted time of the year when your kids are home with you)? We do – they clean what they couldn’t clean during the year, the student’s lockers!

Making The Move Away From Metal

While we are spending our 3 months of summer relaxing at the beach, and eating ice cream, the school janitorial staff is cleaning up from the previous 9 months while school was in session. Schools with metal lockers have a regularly scheduled task associated with those lockers during the summer months, debridement of rust, dent repairs, chemical cleaning of graffiti and surface repainting. Lockers take a beating during the school year, with books being banged around, food deposits and spills, and not to mention, the dreaded odors of smelly, sweaty gym clothes. The labor-intensive cleanup task is costly to the school district, in several areas including labor, materials, and air & surface quality. As you can see, traditional metal lockers require extensive care and maintenance, and still don’t meet the needs of the busy school environment. But, we have a solution, Duralife Lockers® made with HDPE (High Density Polyethylene).

Duralife Lockers® are specifically designed to meet the durability and environmental demands of today’s busy schools. Made with solid-core HDPE, these lockers are impact, scratch and dent resistant, and hold up to the toughest student use. Graffiti readily wipes off the non-porous surface, and because they are impervious to moisture, Duralife Lockers® will never rust, corrode or delaminate. In addition, the HDPE surface does not harbor mold, mildew or bacterial growth, and the lockers can be fully power-washed or steam-cleaned. In short, with Duralife Lockers® you can say goodbye to rust, mold, graffiti, scratches, dents, and worrisome bacteria, and say hello to years of worry-free, low maintenance.

 

Robert Gannon, High School Facilities Director, on the benefits of HDPE lockers.

*Testing conducted by SiTU Biosciences LLC by the ISO 22196 methods

 

Sleek Modern Design For The School Hallways Of Tomorrow

When it comes to design, the modern sleek, simple lines of the Duralife® Locker line, make them a polished and aesthetically pleasing addition to any school hallway. They can really kick it up with their color options that bring high style to any atmosphere. The sustainability and durability stand up over time, making them a smart investment for today and tomorrow.

So Show Your Janitors Some Love This Summer – Invest In The Smart Choice – Duralife Lockers®

Download our brochure and see for yourself how HDPE Duralife Lockers® compare to traditional metal lockers – and Show Your Janitor Some Love This Summer!

Creating a Safe Learning Environment Through Facility Maintenance & Management

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One of the most important components of a person’s ability to learn is their environment. Whether it’s a young child or an adult college student, the facility in which they’re being educated directly affects their ability to learn. As a facility manager, it’s important to take the necessary steps to ensure that you’re creating a safe learning environment through facility maintenance and management.

Here are a few tips and tricks to help you make sure that your facility is well maintained and managed in the hopes of it being perceived as a safe learning environment.

Air Quality

While air quality is important to consider on all levels, it can actually have a direct effect on a person’s ability to learn. If your facility has poor indoor air quality, it could lead to students having irritated eyes, upper respiratory infections, headaches, and even sleepiness—not exactly a recipe for improved learning.

You can take several steps in your facility maintenance and management plan to increase the quality of your air. One involves having clean floors. While mopping and vacuuming can be effective, one way to stop allergens and other harmful materials is through floor mats. Large floor mats placed outside and inside can catch some of these materials and prevent them from entering the air. Be sure to have the floor cleaned at least twice a week. If you’re using a vacuum, it’s always a good idea to clean out the filter regularly.

Cleaner Restrooms

The quality of air in restrooms can be questionable. Humidity and moisture tend to build up in bathrooms, which then can result in mold and fungus. While air fresheners in your facility maintenance plan can be useful for combating the odors in the bathroom, the culprit may be your stalls and partitions.

Bathroom partitions are constantly subjected to moisture and humidity, mold can eventually grow inside the stalls, which will continuously drop the air quality. By, Investing in HDPE (high-density polyethylene) stalls  it can  help to prevent the growth of mold. HDPE is resistant to moisture and a more durable material than those found in most stalls.

Reducing Graffiti

While art is important in a person’s education, said art should only be placed on a designated canvas. Graffiti is a common scourge to facility surfaces like lockers and bathroom stalls. Painting over the graffiti is a common answer to the problem, but not only will it invite more graffiti, the paint could put VOC (volatile organic compound) emissions into the air.

In this instance, using HDPE lockers for your facility maintenance and management plan has numerous benefits. The material is resistant to graffiti and scratches, so it doesn’t require you to repaint it. Any drawing or writing can be easily wiped away without having to risk the air quality during graffiti removal.

Better Ventilation

It’s always good to check the ventilation system to make sure that everything is working properly. Discomfort can be a huge distraction when trying to learn, so providing a comfortable environment is crucial. Make a point to continuously check your heating and ventilation systems to ensure that they’re performing as expected without any waste in energy.

We hope that these facility maintenance and management tips will help to promote a safer learning environment in your school or facility. If you want to learn even more about how you can create a safe learning environment, check out our Hiny Hiders case study and learn how HDPE bathroom stalls helped the Dallas Independent School District.

Promoting Inclusivity and Diversity in Your Classroom

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When a safe and inclusive classroom is created, more students are capable of achieving a higher level of learning and understanding, not to mention a smoother transition into later stages of education like college or graduate school. Promoting inclusivity and diversity in the classroom is the responsibility of the teachers and school administrators, since the success of their efforts relies solely on the success of their student body.

In this post, we explore why inclusivity is so important and how to facilitate an all-inclusive learning environment, and we’ll showcase an example of one school that demonstrated impeccable inclusivity and diversity within its classrooms.

Why Is Inclusivity Important?

Simply put, inclusivity is important because it promotes the education of all students equally, no matter their race, sex, religion, or any other factor. There are two main issues that arise when talking about inclusivity: a feeling of belonging and stereotype threat.

When students have a feeling of belonging within the classroom or in the educational institution as a whole, they’re less likely to struggle with coursework and campus life. Creating a sense of belonging helps students to integrate into the educational institution and aids them in achieving their educational goals.

Stereotype threat, on the other hand, is the fear of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s own in-group, especially when the student strongly identifies with that group. This can significantly impact the focus and performance of students and create other cognitive obstacles. Students from less privileged socioeconomic statuses, women in math and science classes, members of the LGBT community, and students of other backgrounds are at risk of suffering from stereotype threat.

By promoting inclusivity and diversity in the classroom, teachers can significantly lower the instances of these barriers to learning.

How to Promote Inclusivity in Your Classroom

With a little bit of planning, you can help to promote inclusivity and diversity in the classroom. The first step it to ensure that you include diverse ideas, content, and materials. Whenever you’re constructing a syllabus, be sure to include context and diverse resources to illustrate your lesson plan. It’s also important to be aware of any biases that you may have or any experiences that may shape your perspective or selection of materials.

Other ways to promote inclusivity in the classroom is to foster an inclusive environment. Encourage students to contribute and set clear expectations for how you’d like students to interact with each other so as to keep a certain level of respect and fairness. As the educational facilitator, it’s important that you show respect for all comments and questions and provide an atmosphere where students feel safe to contribute.

Celebrating Schools That Practice Inclusivity and Diversity

Scranton Products recently held a national competition where schools were encouraged to create videos about inclusivity and diversity. The winning school, Williamsburg Christian Academy, was awarded $50,000 in Duralife Lockers and $7,500 in scholarships as the first place prize.

Serving students in grades K-12, Williamsburg Christian Academy demonstrated a wide variety of inclusivity, which takes place in many aspects of school life. Students and faculty worked together to create the winning video, which was selected during a public voting round into the TOP 100 videos. The video was then chosen by a panel of judges for the first place prize.

New Research Shows Positive Connection Between Classroom Design and Learning

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The team designing and executing a school facility has a lot of responsibilities, including student safety. Recently, it’s been discovered that design can impact the students’ attitudes and even the way they retain information.

When designing a school facility, use this information to inspire the design and increase students’ performances in reading, writing, and math.

The American Institute of Architects has discussed UK-based HEAD (Holistic Evidence and Design) findings regarding this information.

Key Findings

HEAD spent three years studying 153 classrooms in 27 schools in Blackpool, Hampshire, and Ealing, UK, that involved 3,766 students. They found evidence that shows how important classroom design is to students’ learning and what factors yield these results.

The study looked at three dimensions or design principles that have been used to suggest and structure the factors that should be considered to keep students engaged in different activities. These dimensions are naturalness, individualization, and stimulation.

Naturalness is about the light, sound, temperature, air quality, and other links to nature. Individualization is about a student’s ownership, flexibility, and connection to the environment. And stimulation is about the appropriate level of complexity and color.

Using this three-part structure, the study focused on the impact of various elements of school environments on students. Its findings are directly related to the facility’s design and construction, such as natural light and the shading of the windows as well as their location.

A classroom should have distinct characteristics and a location that allow students to be relaxed but also promotes a sense of ownership. And to appeal to the appropriate level of stimulation, the overall atmosphere must be engaging but free of clutter. Bright colors should be used only as accents.

Classroom Designs and Materials

Studies have demonstrated that an aesthetically pleasing environment designed in a certain way will better contribute to students’ learning and comfort. Architects and engineers should consider this information when creating a building’s design.

In addition to the layout, window placement, and other factors necessary for a stimulating facility, it’s important to ensure the use of materials that are safe for the children and provide for a healthy environment.

Scranton Products utilizes high-density polyethylene (HDPE) to reduce the environmental impact and improve facilities’ indoor air quality.

Solid plastic HDPE doesn’t absorb moisture, resists mold and mildew, and has a 25-year warranty. The partitions and lockers can be power washed and steam cleaned, so you never have to use harmful chemical cleaners. They contain a solid color throughout, so you’ll never need to paint them, which eliminates VOC emissions.

Click here to find out where you can purchase Scranton Products for your facility.