‘Historical’ benches brought back to life at Prince Charles Public School

Craig Bakay | Feb 12, 2020

At the end of the day, they may be just benches, but to some people, they mean a little more than that.

So when students from Prince Charles Public School in Verona came to Atkinson Home Hardware in Hartington for paint and supplies to fix them as part of Brian Grigg’s 6/7 shop class, they expected to pay with funds set aside from Parents School Council fundraisers.

But Wendy Rose wouldn’t hear of it.

You see, Rose was a student at Prince Charles and remembers those benches well.

Not only did she arrange for a donation, she went to the trouble of colour-matching the paint so it would be the actual Prince Charles colours.

“They (the benches) were sky blue but we thought it might be a good idea to have have them in the school colours (green and yellow),” she said. “I got the colours from the “P” in Prince Charles.

“I remember them well, they were used for all sorts of things — choir, school photos, even as boards for floor hockey.”

“They had become a backdrop but now they’re a centrepiece,” said Principal Peter Mouncey.

He said real-life projects like this give students an education they can’t get from more theoretical teaching.

“The emphasis is on problem-solving — from a practical standpoint,” Mouncey said. “They have to figure out what tools they need, how to do a lot of measuring and such.

“They thought it was going to be simple once they started looking at it, some of the boards were in bad shape and we had to remove two cups of screws.”

That aspect wasn’t lost on the students.

“We were going to try to use the same tops and sides but we couldn’t for all of them,” said Jason Rose. “Our top was too small so we had to cut down one end and move the legs.”

“And I didn’t expect all the sanding we had to do,” said Sydney Leonard. “We had to sand for painted and the corners had to be rounded off so people wouldn’t injure themselves if they bumped into them.”

“The painting was fun but I didn’t know about all the sizes of sandpaper,” said Maddy Bruschette, whose dad Norm runs MB Carpentry and helped out, mostly in the background. “He did the big cuts and double checked measuring.

“I enjoyed the project, especially learning how to use a drill.”

Rose said the students did most of the work.

“Mr. Grigg comes over and shows you how to do it,” he said. “So then you can do it.

“Now they won’t have to be rebuilt a hundred times.”

So, what’s next for the Prince Charles shop class?

Actually Rose has a suggestion.

“When I was going here, there was a white picket fence out front,” she said. “I have a few pallets of picket fences in my yard.”