Fort Worth area teachers building face shields for health care workers in spare time
Teachers at Harmony school campuses across the region are on a mission to produce more than 500 face shields for Tarrant County Public Health workers.
As of Tuesday, teachers had already taken to their 3D printers to make 200 shields to donate to the agency, according to a Harmony Public Schools news release.
Working from home during their off-hours after helping Harmony students with distance learning, the teachers are using 3D printers to build medical-grade face shields for health care workers across Tarrant County who are facing the coronavirus, the infection that causes COVID-19.
Adriane Fox, the Makerspace teacher at Harmony School of Innovation-Euless, has printed more than 30 headbands for the face shields with her personal printers, the release said. But now that the school has allowed her to take 3D printers home with her, Fox said she has been able to increase her output.
“Now I’m printing pretty much 24/7,” said Fox, who instructs second- through fifth-grade students in the principles of engineering. “We should have another 200 ready to go by Tuesday.”
The printers are either personally owned by the teachers, or on loan from Harmony Public Schools, the release said. The school system is implementing similar 3D-printed face shield programs at its campuses across the state, the release said.
There are 19 teachers from eight different Harmony Public School campuses across the Fort Worth-Dallas region who are working together, but not in the same place because they exercise social distancing, to help provide needed medical equipment to community health care employees.
A student challenged Fox to help in some way with the effort to provide personal protective equipment for first responders and a student whose mother is a nurse also commented that she believed the school could provide this gear, Fox said.
The nurse even supplied the teachers with a design they could follow, Fox said.
The teachers started working, tweaked the design, and eventually even came up with a more practical design that allowed medical professionals to replace the splash guard portion of the face shield using materials they can easily purchase on their own, Fox said.
This project fulfills an immediate need but also furthers one of the faculty’s far-reaching agendas, according to Fox.
“We’ve been sharing our experience,” Fox said. “This really means a lot to us. One of our goals is to teach the kids how to help the community.”
Materials to produce each face shield cost about $1, according to the release.
The teachers are soliciting material or funding donations from the public to complete their mission. The teachers need transparent PETG plastic sheets, between .002 or .003 in thickness, which are used for the shield part of the masks, the release said.
Those wishing to donate can visit the Harmony website.
Harmony Public Schools educates students from Pre-K through grade 12 for free and is a college preparatory charter school system focused on providing science, technology, engineering, math and character education.
