Blog Post 2- Classroom Description

I have an art room at two different schools. My one school, Clark Elementary was renovated more recently than my second school, Marshall Elementary. During the renovations, the head of the art department was adamant about creating an art room in the building plans, and was able to design the blue prints himself for the art classroom. Because of this, the art room at Clark has large windows that allow tons of natural light to come in, two sinks, two large display boards, a large amount of storage, a spray booth, a kiln, and a decently sized storage closet with a laundry type sink. I love teaching my classes at this school because I keep all of my materials between the two schools stored here. The lighting is wonderful and I feel more prepared here.

At Marshall, I am placed in a wing that is separate from the rest of the general education classrooms. My room was an old second grade classroom. My storage is limited and doesn’t function well as an art room because it was never intended to be one. I have one sink (which is still wonderful), but the lighting isn’t great and the room is much smaller and gets very crowded when I have a full class of 25-27 students.

Both of my rooms are used when I am not there. Students will work in small groups in there with a counselor, to make up a test, or (I believe) occupational therapy. Sometimes the gym teacher uses my room at Marshall on mornings I’m not at Marshall because his office is shared with the music teacher.

I definitely am working on making my classes feel more inviting. Right now they are very bland/empty looking. I want my room to be exciting to my students, but I also don’t want to over-stimulate my students with rainbow decorations. Part of my problem doing this is I feel guilty making one room better than the other. For example, I feel it isn’t fair to my students at Marshall to have to sit at their tables all day while I’m incorporating flexible seating at Clark because I have the room. I also don’t have the monetary resources to buy or make decorations for both classrooms which I find to be a personal struggle. I tell myself “fair isn’t always equal” but do find it difficult to find a way to make both classroom layouts fair and benefiting to instruction. Instagram and Pinterest are wonderful resources when it comes to following art educators. I love seeing their lessons and classroom layout, but in my opinion, it seems that posts that were meant to be helpful and inspiring can turn into a competition if you let them. I’m still trying to find that balance as a new teacher of what I want my classroom to look like. How I want instructional materials and student work to be displayed within me room and where.

I have pictures to follow but am unable to get into my room at this time due to cleaning restrictions.