Seussian

Finally, a theme I can work with!

One of our responsibilities is to decorate our classrooms. I posted about this before and I was recently chastised again for my decorating abilities. My boss actually said I have one of the worst decorated classrooms. How does my decorating ability dictate the quality of my teaching?

I have been hanging a lot of my student's artwork and other creations on the walls. I was told not to do that. That I had to decorate the walls professionally and change the design every month.

Firstly, I didn't know that professionally decorated walls cluttered with repetitious patterns contributed extensively to student learning. I thought that students liked seeing their artwork displayed on the wall. But who am I to talk?.....Just their teacher!

Secondly, wouldn't parents rather see their child's creations and hard work on the wall than examples of the teacher's coloring ability?

Thirdly, we are expected to purchase all of the supplies for these fabulously decorate classrooms with our own money. We're expected to create posters, wall decor, banners, and borders from scratch. Colored paper is hard to find and expensive and we don't have a color printer or copier. So we are expected to spend countless hours coloring black and white clip art, cut them out, and laminate them.

Fourthly, we teach theme based months. Christmas in December was easy to find decorating materials. But my January theme was 'Energy'. There was a lot of hands on stuff in the curriculum but I was really struggling to find decorations relating to energy.

Long story short: February's theme is 'books and authors' and focuses on Dr. Seuss. Easy to decorate with Dr. Seuss. I spent the better part of my Saturday (day off) creating decorations for my classroom.

I defy anyone to say anything about my decorations this month. I was able to relate to some of the frustrations expressed in these WWII cartoons by Theodor Geisel.