HAYDEN — Wearing safety gloves and magenta headphones with a galaxy design, Autumn Parks rested a long piece of lumber on a picnic table as she smoothed out the edges.

“I’m sanding it down so nobody gets splinters when they go to bed," she said.

As an American Heritage Girl, Autumn already had some experience working with lumber.

“I made a staff this August, a walking stick, and it taught me how to sand,” she said. “I thought, 'I can sand, let’s do that!”

The Hayden Canyon Charter seventh grader shared how she thought it was really cool that her school was building beds for other children just like her.

"Every time I go to my grandma’s house, we don’t usually have a bed, so I have to sleep on the floor, and that’s not very nice," Autumn said. "To think that somebody has to do that every day, I would not have a very nice time."

About 55 seventh and eighth graders spent most of the school day Dec. 10 working with the Spokane chapter of the Sleep in Heavenly Peace nonprofit pre-assembling 10 twin beds that will be delivered in mid-January to North Idaho children in need of safe and comfortable places to sleep. The beds will be used as singles or stacked into bunk beds as needed.

“We build and deliver beds to kids that do not have beds, ages 3-17,” said Lenny Wolf, president of the Sleep in Heavenly Peace Spokane Chapter, which serves the Inland Northwest, including North Idaho.

“When we deliver beds, it’s not just the frame; it’s the mattress, the sheets, the comforter and the pillow," he said. "They get the whole entire setup.”

Eighth graders Levi Dunn and Kai Erikson used a drill press to punch holes into boards.

“I think it’s cool that we’re making stuff for charity,” Levi said.

Kai said he'd previously worked with some of the equipment they were using that day.

"North Idaho College, they do a program for middle school where you build birdhouses and stuff," he said.

Wolf said one really cool part of the wood preparation included dipping the lumber into a solution of steel wool and vinegar.

"The steel wool gives the wood a patina," he said. "The vinegar repels any and all bedbugs for many, many years."

Sleep in Heavenly Peace was founded in 2013 in Twin Falls and has expanded to have more than 325 chapters throughout the country. The Spokane chapter has built and delivered 70 beds this year, plus 29 that were delivered Saturday.

According to the nonprofit's website, shpbeds.org, 214 youth in the Inland Northwest are in need of beds.

For a lot of kids, it’s just a bed, Wolf said.

“But to a lot of kids who don’t have a bed, it’s a big, big deal,” he said. “We’ve delivered to 17-year-olds that have never had a bed in their life. It gets to you. Just talking about it, it gets me every time.” 

A safe, restful place to sleep each night promotes overall well-being, he said.

“Think about brain function, health, all of those things play into how you sleep,” he said. “There’s a massive amount of studies into kids that get a good night of sleep vs. a kid that doesn’t and how well they perform at school the next day, how short their temper is. There’s a bunch of stuff like that that plays into it. Also, our bodies need rest, and when you’re sleeping in an uncomfortable situation, you’re not getting good rest.” 

A father of four, Wolf said he has a soft spot in his heart for kids, as most adults do.

"When you go in and you do these deliveries, you feel it in your heart," he said. "You see these situations and these kids just get so, so excited.”

While Hayden Canyon's students had a lesson in community service and elbow grease, the project also fulfilled Idaho state requirements including creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, service, citizenship, mathematical calculations with measurements, building and writing. Students wrote narratives about the importance of this work. They were then given resources to learn how they can individually make differences in their community in other ways.

“I look out in our community to see what is needed and how I can connect that to the requirements of education," Hayden Canyon Charter Superintendent Sam Abrams said.

He said Hayden Canyon's goal is to crush the national average of preparedness for the workforce.

“Right now, 60% of Gen Z are quitting their job within the first year, and that is a poor metric of the preparedness program," he said. "What I need them to learn is what the real world looks like so they’re ready for it."

He gestured toward the students at the assembly stations.

“Right there is the real world," he said. "They’re going to have a boss, they’re going to have a team, they’re going to have arguments, they’re going to be asked to measure something and if they measure it wrong, they’ve got to fix it, not just turn it in and get an ‘F’ and move forward. They’ve got to go back and revise.

“We want to prepare them for the world, and the only way to do that is to bring the real world to the kids,” Abrams said.

Info: shpbeds.org

    Seventh grader Autumn Parks sands a piece of lumber Dec. 10 at Hayden Canyon Charter as part of a project to build 10 twin beds for Sleep in Heavenly Peace, which will deliver the beds to local children in need in January.
  

    Seventh grader Rowan Stowe, second from left, inspects a board Dec. 10 while preparing lumber for beds that will go to local children in need. From left: Trey Fisher, Rowan, Brax Dahlstrom, Colton Flitcroft and Jackson Lundy.
  

    Sleep in Heavenly Peace Spokane Chapter President Lenny Wolf works with Hayden Canyon students Dec. 10 as 10 twin beds are preassembled. The beds will be completely furnished with mattresses, sheets and comforters when they are delivered to children in need in January.