Islip Academic Center Introduces a Wind Phone

For students grappling with the loss of a loved one or loneliness due to estrangement, Islip Academic Center (IAC) offers something that may help them manage those feelings – a wind phone.

Wind phones are a Japanese novelty that has spread around the globe. It includes an outdated piece of technology – a disconnected rotary phone – which is located in a secluded and peaceful outdoor area. At IAC, the phone rests on a wooden coffee table by a bench in a quiet, wooded space on the side of the school building. Both the table and bench were built by the school’s Carpentry students for this purpose.

Assistant Principal James Muller wanted his students to have something that could possibly provide solace, reconnection and remembrance. “It’s a way for participants to have a conversation without judgement,” he explained.

The first wind phone was built in 2010 by Japanese garden designer Itaru Sasaki as a means to cope with the grief of losing his cousin. He built a glass-paneled phone booth with a disconnected rotary phone on a hilltop in his garden. After the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami killed more than 20,000 people in the region, he opened it up to the public. People lined up to use it and its inspiration spread to other countries. It’s now not uncommon to find them cloistered in the corners of open public spaces and on hiking trails.

According to Muller, his students were fascinated by the old rotary phone, which Carpentry Teacher David Rosman found online. “None of them had ever seen or operated one,” he said.

Muller applied a little flexibility to the use of IAC’s wind phone by telling students to use it for any conversation they’d like to have with someone, no matter the circumstances. “I want students to use it as a means to help with feelings associated with personal conflicts, trauma, anger, anything. It doesn’t matter if the recipient is deceased, no longer speaking to you, or any other number of scenarios. It’s a healthy way to talk through your emotions,” he said.

Islip Academic Center is an Eastern Suffolk BOCES school that provides a multifaceted, secondary academic program to special education and non-classified, at-risk students with severe behavioral concerns and limited anger management skills. Students are offered a departmentalized academic program of the New York State Regents Curriculum.