When Ella Doloughty started playing a recorder in her elementary school music class, engineering students at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire redesigned the instrument so that she could play it better and more easily — since the third-grader was born without a full left arm.
“Ella’s mom had a teacher friend at Stevenson and engineering students there helped us out,” said Sarah Murray, the music teacher at Country Meadows Elementary School where Doloughty attends.
Olivia Holsen, a junior at Stevenson, helped re-fashion Ella’s instrument with the help of other classmates in the school’s engineering design and development class.
Working on the project for six weeks, students chose to make a series of clips attached to strings that connected to a bracelet on Ella’s short arm, Holsen said.
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“This allowed Ella to maneuver her left, shorter arm and pull on the strings to operate the clip. It made us happy, and Ella was definitely happy and excited,” Holsen said.
“In this class, you don’t get to see the consumer of our products. This made our work more meaningful,” she said.
Other student teams came up with more designs for Ella to try, which she did recently by visiting the engineering classroom at Stevenson with her father, Edward Doloughty.
The design Ella chose attached onto the recorder’s neck, featuring larger paddles over the holes on the recorder.
“The paddles made it easier for Ella to play the notes because the bigger paddles made a bigger target for pressing down,” said Mike Anderson, a Stevenson engineering teacher. “She can play the notes now because before Ella was not able to reach the farther note holes.”
The students also designed a horn-shaped piece that attached to her arm with a sleeve cuff that operated the paddles, he said.
Murray said playing recorders for all third grades in School District 96 is part of the curriculum.
In May 2018, Ella played the xylophone alongside classmates, and modifications were made for her with that instrument as well, Murray said.
To play the xylophone, two handheld mallets are used to strike the instrument’s bars to make musical sounds, she explained.
“I would take a medical bandage to attach the mallet to her arm to play like everyone else,” she said.
Shy and soft-spoken, Ella Doloughty, 8, said her classmates enjoy watching and hearing her play the recorder, which makes her feel good.
“I know how to play ‘Hot Cross Buns’ on it, and my parents and friends thought it was cool to see me play this instrument,” she said.
Edward Doloughty watched as his daughter got ready to play her recorder at Stevenson.
“She’s been practicing at home and she enjoys it,” he said.