I’ve been using a standing desk in my classroom for the past year or so, and there’s no way I could go back.
For the past two years our district gave us $250 to spend at Amazon for our classrooms, and last year I bought a standing desk converter. It’s made a huge difference.
Now, when I’m doing a demo from my computer I don’t have to lean over to type. They keyboard is at the right height and I’m not looking down at the screens. The one I got was similar to this.
Two reasons I went with this instead of a full, motor powered standing desk.
First, it was cheap enough that I could get it with my Amazon money and still have enough left over for some rubber ducks.
And second, I had to have something that converted my existing desk. There wasn’t enough floor space for a second desk and I couldn’t get rid of the existing desk because of storage issues on campus.
I didn’t realize how tight my back was at the end of the day before getting this desk until I stopped having to stoop over to type. At the end of the first few days I was noticeably more relaxed and didn’t feel any tightness in my back. Even after using this for over a year and I’m still more relaxed at the end of the day.
One thing I didn’t expect is that I’m usually more awake during the day, especially towards the end of the day. Not sure that’s a normal side effect of a standing desk, but it is for me.
And several other teachers have gotten similar standing desk converters for their classrooms after seeing mine.
Being a teacher, I’m usually standing most of the day anyway so the biggest common complaint about standing desks didn’t really apply. Apparently a lot of new standing desk users take time to get used to not sitting all day. Since we’re standing all day anyway, there wasn’t much of an adjustment.
Turns out I liked having a standing desk at work so much that I bought one for home. But this time I didn’t have to worry about floor space and I could get the one I wanted so I went with a motor powered free standing desk with position memory.
The reason I went with this specific desk is the little bit of extra desk space on the right side. It gives me room to spread out a little more stuff while I’m working. I wanted one that was powered because it is kind of a pain to adjust the one at work up and down, plus this one has four memory presets so I just press a button to go to my perfect height for standing.
And I like it a lot. In fact, I’m typing this post standing up right now.
I would absolutely love to have a full standing desk like I have at home for every student in my room, plus replace the manual one that I’m using.
Unfortunately floor space, and more importantly budgets just don’t allow for it.
I’m sure there would be a lot of playing around with desks going up and down the first few days, but once the novelty wore off I’d imagine the students would really appreciate having the option to not have to sit in a chair for at least one period each day.
