A teacher of math guru Dan Meyer says ."Leave some white space on your walls for your students to fill with their creations-don't let it look like Pinterest threw up in your room!" I totally agree with this. Honestly there are a lot of classrooms that look as though Pinterest threw up in their room. Teachers go with a theme and suddenly their classroom looks like a jungle. Is it fun, probably for a little while.Does it enhance learning? I would say not so much. I walk in some of these classrooms and it makes me feel a little overwhelmed. Kind of like when I look at the clutter on my kitchen table right now. I think students who have trouble with being too stimulated would find those rooms overwhelming too. I like the idea that students contribute to what is hanging up, and show what we are working on, as we work on it.
I went to work at school for a bit today. I did not make a ton of progress. I ordered a bookshelf today. I had bought Wal-Mart shelves last year that have not stood up to the test of time. I hope the one I ordered will last awhile. I need some building skills.
Tomorrow we meet as a grade level team. It is not required of us at this point. However, it is good to get together and get an overview of the upcoming year, share thoughts and ideas, meet our new colleague, look at curriculum, and more. It is helpful to start the year getting maybe close to the same page , if not on the same page. It is always great to see each other after summer. One of our colleagues retired this year and another took a reading position in the district. We didn't have enough students for 7 teachers we are back to 6 second grade teachers. I haven't met our new colleague yet, so that will be interesting. It was really hard to lose a strong member of our team. It is big shoes to fill, which is not fair to the newbie, so I will try to adjust my expectations.
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