Category: Classroom environment

Posted in Classroom environment, Classroom reveal, Decor, Student engagement, Whimsy

Chapter 77: Classroom Reveal 2025

Posted on by redforkhippie
The completed reading corner.
First wall.
That horizontal line is a bulletin board.
I couldn’t resist another tree.
I’ve added plants since this photo was taken.
The kids love the log slices.
I love this fairy tree.
The raven’s nest turned out especially well.
I based my baby dragons’ poses on puppies.
More dragon puppies.
That’s a kelpie, not a horse.
Full-height view of the tree in progress.
Forest floor details.
Hagrid’s hut in progress.
Details from the reading corner.
Contact paper let an ugly bookcase blend in.
My raven was a must. IYKYK.

I didn’t bother with a classroom reveal last year, because frankly, my classroom was a bit underwhelming. After a year of dodging reckless drivers on I-40, I decided the risk of flaming death was just a little too high for my comfort, so in the spring of 2024, I applied for a job teaching sixth-grade ELA at a school much closer to home. It was a great assignment, except for one glaring problem: I couldn’t convince the upper-level administrators to let me paint my room, so I had to settle for fairy lights and whimsical bulletin boards. The kids and their parents were impressed, but I wasn’t. Temporary wall hangings feel hopelessly liminal to me, and liminal spaces have an aura of wrongness about them that no amount of wishful thinking will overcome.

After my kids posted stellar scores on the middle-of-year benchmark test, I went to our then-superintendent — who was new to the district and very enthusiastic about Doing Things Differently, and whose support I’d been cultivating for several months — and asked again.

Welcome to the enchanted forest, where dragon puppies frolic below a whiteboard, a deceptively cute kelpie dips a toe into a stream running next to my desk, a spooky old tree sports a clutch of raven’s eggs and a likely portal to the Otherworld (conveniently tucked out of sight under a worktable), and the bookcases lean against the stone remnants of some long-forgotten castle, watched over by a raven who may or may not be* an incarnation of a Celtic battle goddess. In a nod to my Potterheads, I also tucked Hagrid’s hut into a little clearing behind some evergreens, and there’s enough open space here and there for me to add flourishes later if the mood strikes me.

The kids love it, and it’s making the workstation format that I’m using this year way more fun than it has any right to be. Three days a week, the kids work in small groups, rotating to a different workstation each day — one focused on writing, one on mechanics, and one on reading. The reading station is in the corner, where they sit on log-slice pillows atop a fluffy green carpet and relax while they learn to annotate the stories they read. On Thursdays, we do whole-group activities, and the kids who are all caught up on their work get to sit on the same carpet and read to my three-legged spaniel mix, Pearl, who was certified as a therapy dog last year. (I’ll have another post on that soon.)

If you can convince your administration to let you paint murals in your classroom, I highly recommend it. A little creativity makes a big difference.

Emily

* Is, of course. My master’s thesis was a novel about a 10-year-old banshee who discovers she is the latest incarnation of the Morrigan. Shapeshifting is one of her powers, and — in keeping with Celtic mythology — she frequently takes the form of a raven.

Posted in Classroom environment, Classroom management, Sensory

Chapter 76: Dia duit!

Posted on by redforkhippie

Dia duit! (That’s Irish Gaelic for “good morning.”)

I had a very good morning Thursday, and a very good afternoon, too, despite it being the day before Easter break. There were several reasons for this, but I think the main one was the set of Celtic music CDs I found in the free basket in the teachers’ lounge.

I had to track down a CD player, because there isn’t one on my computer, but Ron had an external drive that he let me use, and I spent part of Thursday morning ripping music to my hard drive while the kids were busy with club meetings.

Then I did a magic trick.

This is an old trick that I’ve heard other teachers mention favorably, but it’s one I’ve never used before, and it worked way better than I anticipated: I turned the music to a low volume — loud enough to hear when the room is quiet, but not loud enough to be distracting — and told the kids to keep their voices soft enough to hear the music in the background.

I’ve never heard them quieter.

The music was nice — very soothing, and a great addition to that sensory-friendly “Nature Company, ca. 1997” vibe I’m trying to cultivate in my room — but I think what really kept them quiet was the fact that we now have a tool to help them self-police. If I say, “You’re too noisy; please quiet down,” they’re skeptical. How do I know they’re too noisy? What does that even mean? “Too noisy” is completely subjective. But if I say, “Guys, I can’t hear the music,” they can listen for a second, confirm that the music is, indeed, inaudible above the din, and make adjustments on their own.

I wish I’d done this in August. My whole year probably would have been easier. I’m definitely keeping this idea for future use.

Posted in Classroom environment

Chapter 73: Bubble Wrap

Posted on by redforkhippie

My classroom has big windows that let in a lot of light, which is awesome. They’re north-facing, so the room doesn’t get too hot, but there’s enough light coming in to keep a few pothos, spider plants, and sansevierias happy.

That’s great when the weather is warm, but my desk is right next to a window, and it got COLD this winter. I got tired of shivering and decided the district’s business manager was probably tired of paying a fortune for heating bills, so I got on Amazon and ordered a big roll of bubble wrap.

Bubble wrap makes fantastic window insulation, and it’s extremely easy to install: Cut sheets of wrap to fit the window, spray the glass with plain old water (I used a plant mister for this, but a spray bottle works just as well), and stick the bubble wrap on. The water creates a suction-cup effect between the glass window and the plastic.

You’ll have to reapply water here and there as it dries, because the bubble wrap will start to come loose, but the time investment on that is minimal — maybe two minutes a week, including the time it takes to refill the mister, and my kids usually notice the plastic loosening up and tell me about it before I even notice. It looks a little odd up close, but from a distance, it just looks like frosted glass.

Bonus: Bubble wrap is translucent, so your room will still get plenty of light, but it’s not transparent, so the kids can’t see through it easily. That’s a big help in my classroom, which faces the street in front of the building. Before I put up the plastic, my nosy middle schoolers were constantly looking out the window and getting distracted by whatever was happening outside. With the plastic up, they can still see shapes moving past, but it’s cut down on a lot of the distractions.

I gave about $16 for a 100-foot roll of bubble wrap on Amazon and spent maybe half an hour installing it. I’m pretty happy with the ROI; anything that can lower energy costs and raise test scores at the same time is worth $16 and 30 minutes to me.

Posted in Classroom environment, Classroom reveal, Decor, Flexible seating, Whimsy

Chapter 62: Belated Classroom Reveal

Posted on by redforkhippie

A new classroom is a new canvas for painting. It’s been my experience that students do not struggle with math because it is too difficult; they struggle with math because they are afraid of it. To help overcome that, I wanted to turn my room into a comfortable, relaxing space that would make them feel the way I felt every time I walked into a Nature Company store in the 1990s.

I used a faux-Lazure technique to paint the walls, mixing a few drops of craft paint with roughly three parts Mod Podge and one part water to make a thin glaze that I scrubbed onto the walls with a circular motion. I layered the color onto the walls gradually, which gave it the soft, blended effect you see here. I like this technique because it has a luminosity that makes you feel as if you are standing inside a watercolor painting. I chose a soothing color palette that is supposed to help kids relax and focus.

I find houseplants very calming, so I bought a big plant stand from Amazon and covered it with fairy lights, plants from my personal collection, and a tabletop fountain that was given to me by a former student several years ago. (The kids LOVE the fountain.) I gave some consideration to the possibility of building a papier-mache tree in one corner, but the lighted tree was on sale for $80, which was less than I would have spent on materials to construct something myself, and it paired nicely with the icicle lights that I absolutely had to have after seeing that decorative overhang cantilevered above the windows. I love fairy lights and have used them to decorate classrooms for years.

The three ceramic squares are significant because two of them are imperfect: “GOOD VIBES ONLY” has a flaw in the glaze that looks as if someone smudged it before it was fired, and “BE KIND” was stamped at a 90 degree angle, so the holes that are supposed to be on the bottom of the square are actually on the side. The only one that is flawless is “DREAM BIG.” I tell the kids that’s because the only place we are perfect is in our dreams, and while it’s good to strive for perfection, I am never going to demand it in my classroom. All I ask is that they show their work, so if they make a mistake, I can help them correct it.

Posted in Classroom environment, DIY, Timesavers, Tools

Chapter 9: A Useful Tool

Posted on by redforkhippie

When I hired in last year, I was delighted to find that two walls in my classroom were covered with big chalkboards like the ones I had in my very first classroom. I was less delighted to learn that we didn’t have any of those big chamois erasers like I remembered using 20 years ago, and the teacher-supply stores in Amarillo and Albuquerque didn’t carry them, either.

Enter my husband, who came in one day with some leftover pipe insulation — the kind that’s about as big around as a Coke can, with a split seam along one side — and asked whether I thought it would be good for anything.

I certainly did. I cut a section about a foot long, wrapped a soft car-wash rag around it, and tucked the ends into the seam. Voila! Instant chamois knockoff.

I made a pair of them and took them to school, along with some spare rags. They work really well on my chalkboards, and they’re easy to maintain: When a rag gets too dusty to use, I just swap it out for a clean one and throw the dirty one in the laundry.

This fall, we got new Promethean boards, which are basically ginormous iPads the size of a big-screen TV. My faux-chamois erasers remove fingerprints from the touchscreen on my Promethean board as effectively as they remove chalk residue from a blackboard. In fact, they’ve come in so handy that I wound up making one for each of my colleagues for Christmas. I hope they find them as useful as I have.

Emily