New Student-Adjustable Desk to be Featured at New York School Board Expo

NORTHFIELD, Ill. - Oct. 14, 2015 - PRLog -- With growing national interest in its innovative design for children with learning differences, the Marvel Focus Desk will be a featured product at the New York State School Boards Association 2016 Conference and Expo. Conference attendees will be able to witness the height-adjustable desk, which allows children to easily shift from sitting to standing, during the Expo from October 18-20 at the Sheraton Times Square Hotel in New York City.

The Marvel Focus Desk supports the movement needs of children with learning challenges, including dyslexia, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and other conditions. Research is clear that allowing such students to physically move during class time improves their concentration and academic performance. These benefits, research is discovering, extend to students in the general population as well. The Focus Desk empowers children to self-regulate their behavior by providing a unique Feathertouch™ lift, a push-button mechanism that silently adjusts the desk’s height without disrupting class instruction.

The Focus Desk was designed by the Marvel Group’s engineers in cooperation with the University of Chicago Hyde Park Day School, (http://hydeparkday.org/) a school that provides a supportive setting for children with attention deficits, dyslexia, and other learning disabilities. Marvel worked with Hyde Park teachers and students for over a year, designing and testing a series of prototype desks at the two schools in Chicago and Northfield, Illinois.

“Marvel let our faculty and students take the lead in describing what they would like in an ideal desk,” notes Casey Crnich, Executive Director of the Hyde Park Day School. “We had no preconceived notions of what the desk would look like in the end.”

In addition to the FeatherTouch™ lift system, several other ideas surfaced from the team including a host of efficient functions to enhance organization and concentration. Drop leaves on each side of the desk allow students to expand their workspace. Integrated study carrel walls pop up for test taking or quiet study. Integrated storage features include color coded hanging files, pencil cups, cabinet space for notebooks and tablets, and an attached backpack hook. Lockable casters make the entire unit easily mobile, allowing teachers to form work groups or rearrange seating with no lifting required.

Since its formal launch in the spring of 2015, Marvel Focus Desks have been placed in public and private schools all over the country. It has been profiled in leading education publications and featured in a television news segment on Chicago’s ABC affiliate, WLS-TV. The New York Conference is the first demonstration of the Focus Desk at a major educator event.

“We are excited to bring the Marvel Focus Desk to a larger audience of educators and adminstrators,” said Nancy Dellamore, Focus Desk Product Manager. “This classroom tool gives children the opportunity to manage their movement needs, and delivers real results in improved attention. We look forward to showing how this real-world collaborative design process generated an outstanding innovation.”

To learn more, contact Nancy Gerstein at Creative Marketing Associates, Nancy@CMACreative.com or 847 401 0384. To see The Focus Desk in action, visit http://marvelfocusdesk.com or watch The Focus Desk demonstration video (http://www.marvelfocusdesk.com/video.html).

About The Marvel Group (http://www.marvelgroup.com/)

The Marvel Group (http://www.marvelgroup.com/) is a 70 year-old Chicago-based manufacturer of a wide range of high-quality furnishings to large, small, and home office markets as well as the education market. Product lines range from office chairs and file cabinets to executive office furniture and open office work-stations. Marvel® products are manufactured to ISO 9001 certified guidelines and backed by a lifetime warranty. The Marvel Group offers superior customer service serving five major industries to assure a problem free and timely project completion. For more information visit www.marvelgroup.com.