3 Classroom Decorations That Totally Make A Difference!

Decorations can definitely make an impact on kids. I think there’s a huge difference between putting things on walls so that they’re filled and putting things on walls because it is going to substantially impact kids in a positive way.

Whether you call it a decoration or décor, I think that what we put up in our classroom says a lot about us as people and it also says a lot about what we believe is important for our students to be seeing every single day. So what I want to dish out to you are three decorations that definitely make a difference.

Now I need to give you a warning, I am terrible at decorating. Like part of the reason why I became a middle school and high school teacher is because I totally had the belief if you taught anything higher than sixth grade, that you would never have to create a bulletin board that you would never have to make things look cute. And the reality is that’s just, I mean that’s, that’s kind of bogus. But seriously, I can barely use a pair of scissors.  If you hand me a pair of scissors, I swear to goodness, it looks like I took a machete to the object. I guess, fine motor skills. So using that dye cut machine in like the teacher’s lounge, definitely not happening. I can barely use a laminator.

So I’m not going to be talking about like cutesy things here. I’m going to be talking about what we post on our walls and the signage that we show kids and, and how that makes an impact, hopefully on their life.

Projector Fun!

The first thing I want to talk about is something that maybe is a little unconventional. This school year I actually decorated my projector. I’ve got this massive piece of electronics coming down from my ceiling and I thought, you know what? We can do something fun with this. I was at the Jo Ann fabrics. And at the Joanne’s, they had their Halloween stuff out and one of the things that they had in the Halloween section were these enormous googly eyes. I mean they are like the size of a large pizza.

What can I do with this? These are bananas! So I got two of them not knowing really what to do with them. And then it occurred to me that I also had a cowboy hat in my classroom. Truly, I don’t even know why I had a cowboy hat in my classroom, but I did and I decided to put the cowboy hat on the top of my projector and then I thought, oh my God, these googly eyes from the Jo Ann’s can be this whole like montage of a person hanging from my ceiling. So I took the googly eyes and I smacked them on both sides of the back of the projector. I put the cowboy hat on top and now I have a speech bubble coming off of the side of the projector that says “howdy.” And just like that, I took something that was super average, like a projector, and made it awesome!

Now, you might be thinking, girl, what educational value does that add to your classroom? And the honest answer is none! It adds absolutely zero educational value to my students, but it does create some laughter. It does cause students to look up at the smart board multiple times, every single class period or every single day, and maybe smile, maybe laugh, maybe chuckle. It’s a decoration that’s making a small difference in the day. And I think sometimes that’s okay. I don’t think that everything that we have to put onto our walls has to have some curricular component to it. Sometimes it’s just showing our personality. Sometimes it’s just saying, you know what, we’re going to do things different and we’re going to have a little bit of fun.

Powerful Words

Another idea that I want to talk about is a poster that I have in my classroom that is super, super simple. I didn’t buy it from a school supply store. I found a Google image and I blew it up and I printed it. It’s probably like a 16 by 20 and there’s one thing on that poster. It literally says, yet that’s all.  Y-E-T. I have it hanging right above my pencil sharpener. So here’s kind of the thought behind this poster.

I think that a lot of times our kids are getting frustrated in classrooms. Our kids are maybe struggling through something academically and they think it’s dumb and they think that they’re stupid and they think that they are never going to be able to get it. And I think that we have to create a culture in our classroom that promotes the growth mindset. That’s a hot topic in education and I don’t want to downplay it as a hot topic because the reality is when our students are giving up, they are not getting to where we need them to be.

So I put this yet poster in front of the Pencil sharpener for two reasons. One, a lot of times when kids are frustrated, their pencils are breaking, their lead is breaking and they need that time away from the paper, from away from the activity, away from the lab, whatever they’re working on, to go sharpen their pencil and just take a second instead of getting more and more frustrated. And as they’re grinding that pencil through the sharpener, I want them to see that poster and just be reminded

Maybe I’m not good at this activity yet.

Maybe I’m not finding the correct answer yet.

Maybe I’m not completely proficient in this area yet.

And that’s okay. It’s this ultimate reminder that we have to stay positive in the classroom. I look at that poster a bajillion times a day. That is a scientific number. I look at that poster so many times during the day and it’s also a reminder for me. I think sometimes we forget as teachers that when we’re putting purposeful objects on the walls, it can also be personally related and as a teacher that’s something that I want to grow in. I want to grow in the growth mindset with my students and it’s super simple. It’s all about the power of yet.

Focus on the Future

This next one is something that I think that makes a difference regardless of the age of our students and that is your college or university pennants. I’m talking like the old school kind of triangular pennants that represent where you attended college, where you got your teaching certificate from. I have one in my classroom from Eastern Illinois University or the Harvard of the Midwest, as I like to call it. It is a small state school that I attended. Uh, and I loved it! I absolutely loved it. But the reason why I have it posted is not because I want students to constantly be asking me about memories from college. The reason why I have it posted is because I think that students need to constantly have college or even future plans at the forefront of their mind.

I want students to be curious about options for college. I want students to know that college is an option and I know that we’re kind of living in a time and a place where college, just the culture of college is changing, right? That there are so many jobs and so many opportunities out there where maybe kids aren’t thinking about college the same way that you and I did, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be exposing them to the possibility of what is out there for them. I know so many of my students both in the past and in the present, their parents didn’t go to college and that’s fine, but I think that we need to let students know that college can be a possibility for them. And something like posting that pennants on your desk or somewhere in your room that kids can see, “hey, ms genta attended EIU” or “hey, my teacher attended this state school” or “hey, my teacher attended this two year college.” I think it’s important that kids know that we are proud of our educational background as teachers. We are promoting education every single day. So shouldn’t we be proud of the education that we got in order to serve our students?

So whether it is re mixing your projector screen or monitor that’s hanging from your ceiling, whether it is as simple as creating a poster that has bold words like yet or it’s something simple like going to your university or getting on the Amazon and ordering a pennant for your classroom, I can promise you that those are three decorations that definitely leave an impact on our students.