Chair socks

When I was a middle school principal, many teachers placed sliced tennis balls under the chairs in their classrooms to reduce noise levels from chairs scraping on the floors. These chair “socks” worked beautifully.

Fast forward 17 years and here I am serving in the Peace Corps, in the Department of Caaguazú, Paraguay. I get to serve and learn from the Paraguayans in a city with 120,000 people and teach in a school that has over 1,600 high school students with 11 courses of study. As a Community Economic Development Volunteer, I work with approximately 60 students in grades 10-12 studying accounting, administration and marketing.

When I first walked into a classroom at the high school I saw metal chairs standing on ceramic floors. Every time someone moved their chair, it made a terrible sound. Remembering my middle school experience, I immediately knew what could help reduce noise in the classroom. The only question was how.

As a former tennis player, I know that tennis balls have a short life before they need to be thrown out or recycled. So I contacted five tennis clubs in Asunción (the capital of Paraguay) via Facebook Messenger and heard back from Tatiana at the Paraguay Lawn Tennis Club. Communication through WhatsApp ensued. Tatiana agreed to organize the donation of over 400 tennis balls, and she also donated children’s books and a whiteboard.

I soon met Tatiana at the club, and she gave me the tennis balls, which I carried in a large suitcase from the capital back to my city in Caaguazú, lugging the heavy suitcase and books onto an omnibus for a four-and-a-half-hour ride. Upon my arrival, my host family collected me and my suitcase, and then delivered me and the tennis balls to the high school and the children’s books to a nearby elementary school. A Peace Corps staff member also went to the club to pick up the whiteboard and encyclopedias and drove them to my site. It was an “all hands on deck” operation.

The items were donated to schools throughout the department of Caaguazú, to the delight of all. Children at the elementary school are now reading enthralling tales from their new books, and high school mechanics students at my school used their tools to cut over 400 tennis balls. Once the balls were cut and put back in the suitcase, I rolled it down the walkways to the administration and accounting classrooms, where students helped slip the new socks onto the bottom of chair legs. Now students in four classrooms have a quieter classroom. The movement of chairs is soundless, and a landfill has been spared.

As the old saying goes, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Thank you to the Paraguay Lawn Tennis Club for its donations, to my host family for assistance with transportation, to Jose T. at the Peace Corps for helping to deliver larger items, and to the coordinator at the elementary school for putting the books into the hands of the children. A special thank you to the mechanical students and their teacher César, who cut over 400 tennis balls. All I can say is wow!