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I think we can all agree that the sound of a happy child is a joyous thing.
And we generally like smiles and a good mood. But.
This sound, and you only heard, not even 15 seconds. You could take it. Some even covered their ears.
To have to listen to this every day, day after day a whole working year, that's something else.
That doesn't make us smile, but rather the opposite. That's not good.
The sound of a happy and playing child should in our day be a positive thing that we need to preserve and facilitate.
Before the project I had two super heroes, Superman and Batman
But against the noise villain, those two can do nothing.
So came Perman[d]. He's actually here today.
It's a free drawing, so sorry it doesn't look like you, Per.
But then Perman[d] came and kicked noise villain out.
He had us thinking about sound, taught us what effect noise can have on our working life.
He taught us that it affected us differently, depending on how old we were. Our group was diverse.
That was a gift.
What you see here is a noise gate which Perman[d] recommended. We got a couple in our house.
When we first heard of noise gates and noise tunnels, we thought, a noise gate?
In our beautiful open house? Sure , we wanted quiet but an actual noise gate?
A noise gate? What is that? We could imagine a dark tunnel where sound would disappear down.
We saw drawings and this is what it turned out to be.
We were involved in choosing how we wanted it.
It's incredible. When you walk down a noise tunnel, the noise disappears.
When you're in it, and come out the other end, you can't hear the sound from that room, in the big building, where it comes from.
Before, the sound went from one end to the other in a building which was 90 meters long. You could hear from the other end.
And when you have 280 kids with their voices and ongoings then the sound travels
so splitting the house up this way is perfect.
We are very happy that we did this, Per.
It's better now. Now we can open the doors and have the teachers and students be together in the open rooms.
So we divided the room in three zones. Sound doesn't travel as much anymore. That's what the noise gate does.
Complaints about headaches. I used to get a lot of those. And stress-related comments. People said it had been wild.
I almost never get that anymore. Once in a while someone will have a headache but that's rare.
This October there was an absence of 5.4%, the lowest ever. That's half from the year before.
And I believe that the project has a significant impact. I don't think it's the only one.
But the short-term absence has absolutely been reduced.
Basically, it has only improved our working environment. It's nice to be able to be with the kids and to be able
to perform one's pedagogical work within the frames around us. Now we chose activities that we want.