A group of students from Concord High School in North Wilmington have engineered a bow for a Lancashire Elementary fourth grader with a disability, who is learning how to play the viola.
The students, who are part of a design and engineering class, attached a contraption made of a 3D printed piece, some wire, velcro and a stress ball for comfort to 9-year-old Rayne Mason Smith’s bow and her wrist. Rayne lifted the bow and stroked the D string of her viola back and forth, producing a few notes.
Rayne has cerebral palsy — a neurological condition that affects her muscle movement — and she has trouble grasping a bow. The students have been creating new prototypes weekly to give her more control of her stroke. Hannah Kennedy, a junior at Concord High, noted Rayne seemed to like the latest design.
“It helps for her to keep the bow straight and it works with the way that she moves her arm,” Kennedy said. “So it translates to the way that a person without disabilities would be able to move their arms and play the viola.”
Lancashire students just started using their bows in orchestra. Nicole Veater teaches the elective and says Rayne is now ahead of the game.
“Rayne was talking about how she often gets stared at because she walks a little differently and she’s not included in everything, and this is making a huge difference in her life and she feels like a superstar,” Veater said.
Helping Rayne fit in with her classmates was the goal of the project, said Antonio Carvalho, another student who worked with her.
“It just seemed very important to us that we could help her and seemed like something easy we could accomplish and help strengthen the community relationships between schools within our district,” Carvalho said.
Antonio Carvalho helps Rayne play the viola:
Rayne, a North Wilmington 4th grader, has Cerebral Palsy. High school students engineered a bow to help her play the viola. pic.twitter.com/VKOadBr3vg — Katie Peikes (@katiepeikes) December 19, 2017
Each week, the students thought about how they could improve on the previous prototype to come up with a product Rayne will be able to use, said Concord High junior Julia Weeks. They will fine-tune their latest prototype and are looking to make it Rayne’s favorite color — pink. They’ll take it back to her after winter break.
“We only get to meet with her once a week,” Weeks said. “…If she doesn’t like it, if it doesn’t work with her, we have to take it back and redo it.”
This project is one of a few with Brandywine School District high school students finding engineering solutions for challenges in their community, part of a program called BSD Community Engineers.