It’s Monday morning, and right before your midterm starts you notice your computer won’t turn on. Suddenly, you’re hit by a wave of despair. 

How could your computer decide to stop working right before one of the most important tests of the year? Fortunately, before you start freaking out, you remember the desk with green umbrellas that sits in a corner of the atrium with a small sign: the Help Desk.

As the use of computers in class becomes the new norm, Jackson-Reed, with about 2,000 students and 140 teachers, has been forced to deal with a whole new range of issues that can’t just be solved by turning the computer off and on again. 

That’s where the Help Desk comes in. Responsible for dealing with any of the school’s tech issues, the Help Desk has around 24 interns working throughout the day under the supervision of Technology Instructional Coach David Thompson.

So, to get a better understanding of the job, I asked a few interns working there about what their typical work day looks like. “We do more than just working with laptops; a lot of the major issues in the school are solved by us,” said Senior Leila Ackil, who’s been working at the help desk since last summer. “We distribute Yondr pouches, we organize backrooms and offices, we deliver supplies to teachers, and even do landscaping sometimes,” Ackil continued. 

When Thompson founded the Help Desk in the fall of 2022, his goal was to make sure that technology remains a tool for learning, not an obstacle. 

“We want technology to be invisible within the school,” he said. “So the quicker we can address issues, the better for everybody.” Thompson attributed a lot of the Help Desk’s success to the communication and teamwork of the interns, later saying that “there’s no way for the help desk to work without the dedicated students sitting behind it.”

Although interns handle most of the day-to-day problems, every once in a while a student will bring computers in “less than ideal” conditions, with missing keys and broken screens being the most common examples. 

In those situations, interns send the computers to OCTO, the people contracted  by DCPS to maintain technology infrastructure, who work behind the scenes fixing and repairing these computers to be later reassigned to students.

While many of the issues can be solved with quick fixes, others are a little more… unique. There was an instance when interns had to fix a computer that was covered in such a thick layer of Cheetos dust that the keys got stuck under a thick orange crust, and the screen had so many smudges that it required a thorough cleaning before they could even try fixing it.

So next time you walk past those green umbrellas in the atrium, remember the dedicated interns working to make sure that no matter the issue, you’re gonna be up and running in no time. •