Dear First Year,
In June of 2023, I received the keys to my new classroom. It was in the basement. Of what used to be a poorly-designed office building.
Four walls, all uniform eggshell white, crammed with twenty-four desks. The room had only one window, the view to the parking lot permanently concealed by vinyl vertical blinds (the drawstring was broken).
I shared the space with another English teacher named Tom,* who confessed to me on our first day that he had no eye for interior design, but that I should feel free to decorate as I pleased.
I knew what to do with my desk area. I needed my usuals: two framed Atlantic covers, one featuring Joan Didion, the other a close-up of an owl with wise, golden eyes; the one-page “Ode to the Thesaurus” by James Parker; the headshot of Virginia Woolf. I set my framed “Miss Dorian” sign, made by a sophomore in 2018, on my desk, and, with washi tape, made rectangles to denote the date, the daily agenda, and the homework on the whiteboard. Tom had the desks configured in the only arrangement that seemed possible, given the size of our classes and the size of the classroom.
The space still looked bland, and I had no idea what to do next.
You’d think that at this point, I would know how to decorate a classroom. It was my fourth in eight years of teaching. How could I expect my students to be present, to rise to the occasion of critiquing and discussing great literature, asking questions, and writing with candor and passion, if the atmosphere I was providing didn’t nourish those behaviors?
But classroom decorating has never come naturally to me.
Shortly after a PTO welcome lunch, I went to the middle school wing, to visit two of my new teacher friends. Emmy is an art teacher who also teaches yoga on the side. Her room is a testament to her resourcefulness: even in a carpeted, ‘70’s-style, wood-paneled, former corporate office with cathedral ceilings and poor lighting, she created an idyllic learning space. She had five hexagon-shaped tables, at the center of which she’d placed a toolbox of brushes, colored pencils, and Elmer’s glue. Posters featuring definitions and historic examples of artistic techniques lined the walls. She had a binder for each student, organized by class section and grade level, and party lights lining both of the whiteboards, which were, of course, divided with thicker, more colorful washi tape, and clad with inspirational quotes about creativity and artistry.
Lexi’s room, right across the hall, wasn’t far off. She taught seventh grade English, and her room struck that equilibrium of tranquility-meets-curiosity. Both of their classrooms looked straight out of Pinterest.
“Lexi and I went to Five Below yesterday,” Emmy explained, grinning. “We stocked up on all the teacher stuff.”
I’d never been to Five Below, but it was right around the corner. If I wanted my room to look anything like their rooms did, I had to go.
Later that day, after I’d set up my emergency folders, printed the first day’s activity, revised the syllabus eighteen times, and reviewed about a dozen 504’s and IEP’s, I drove around the corner to the strip mall and marched into the aforementioned discount store, so named, I learned, because nearly everything is $5 or less.
I love a good bargain. Hell, I’ve been living on a teacher’s salary since I was twenty-two.
And Five Below was chock-full of stuff.
Art supplies, planners, notebooks; cheap, miniature-sized artificial plants; pillows for your first dorm room; discount snacks, charger cables for any Apple product. I wandered the aisles, dubious.
Moving as many times as I have has taught me to detest clutter and to resent buying items that I may, eventually, have to pack up and transport. I thought about leaving the store—I didn’t really need any of this stuff, did I?
Then, my inner critic piped up, in the form of my very first principal in my very first semester of teaching, in a community that cared more about the amount of football games that I did or did not attend than it cared about whether or not my students were reading quality literature. He scanned my room, and, I imagined at the time, must have concluded that the lack of adornments were a testament to the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing.
“Yeah, it’s looking a little bare in here.”
The comment probably didn’t mean anything. But at the time, the only feedback I’d received about my performance was reassurance that the students liked me. Great. The students liked me: but why? Were they learning anything? Or did they just think that I was cool? If it was the latter, then, really, what would I have to show for that, if they never became competent, critical readers and thinkers?
Was I really doing a good job? And if I couldn’t even properly decorate my classroom — the practice that is supposed to ignite every first-year teacher with enough anticipation to fill a Pinterest board with ideas — was I really meant to be in this profession?
Needless to say, I’ve certainly internalized my former administrator’s critique that my classroom lacked that pedagogical flare.
And there I was, an eight-year teacher, wandering the discount store, without a list, attempting to discern which decorative pillows and leopard-print notebooks I should purchase to spice up the hovel that was my classroom.
You’d think that at this point, I’d have figured out what makes a classroom. I mean, what does a classroom need? How do I want my students to feel when they walk into it?
I remember how I felt as a student: overwhelmed, anxious, overstimulated. Hell, I still feel that way at school, and I think we’d solve a lot of problems in schools if we painted the walls with warm colors, swapped the hospital fluorescent lights, eliminated bells, and created spaces for reflection and contemplation. Why do so many schools resemble prisons anyway?
Overwhelmed, I ended up in an aisle full of home decorations. Rugs, party lights, fake plants. I settled on a Himalayan salt lamp. It was exactly $5.00, the size of a garden gnome, and seemed fitting: Himalayan salt lamps provide tranquility in a home, so why not in a classroom?
For good measure, I also bought a set of decorative wall cards, all 8” by 5” rectangles featuring photos of greenery. You know, because nature always adds something to the space. When I got home later that day, I gathered all of my old copies of the New Yorker and cut off the covers that I thought would be inspiring. I had a stack of literary postcards, each of which featured quotes from Oscar Wilde, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Jane Austen, which I figured I could tape around the whiteboard, a border of literary enrichment and inspiration. I had some maps of Montana that I’d cut up and pasted to canvases using hodgepodge: maps always inspire me to use my imagination, so why wouldn’t they work for my students?
I spent the next day in the classroom, standing on desks, overthinking the configuration of my wall decorations, and wasting my colleague’s only roll of janitor-approved blue tape. I’d leave for a bathroom or coffee break, then come back to find that the picture of the birds of paradise plant had, again, floated to the floor, or that the quote from Gatsby had slipped under a desk. My New Yorker covers, left unframed, and whose edges were uneven due to my careless scissor job, looked tacky against the off-white paint on the back wall.
And then there was the Himalayan salt lamp. In my haste to purchase something to bring a little soul to the place, I’d bought it without looking at the fine print: it had a USB plug-in, which meant that I couldn’t plug it into an outlet in the wall. I’d need to buy another USB cube outlet just so I could even use the thing.
I couldn’t even add light to the space without making another trip to the store.
Incredulous, I stuffed the lamp back in its box and tossed it into another, larger box of leftover books and folders that I couldn’t fit on my classroom shelf. The lamp would sit in the box, which would sit in my parents’ garage, for the entire school year to follow.
I’d also spend the entire school year collecting literary postcards and green foliage-clad decorative wall cards from the floor like pine needles from a decrepit Christmas tree.
My attempts to enhance my classroom weren’t all for nothing. Some students took note of the New Yorker cover that juxtaposed the human hand with the hand of a robot’s, and others appreciated the bit of color I attempted to add with the digitally-printed, mass-produced imitation greenery.
But, for the most part, the decorations were not indicative of whether or not my classes went well.
As a matter of fact, I don’t know why I thought that decorations would make much of a difference. In the eight years that I’ve been teaching, the only decoration that enhanced my students’ experience was a board I made featuring synopses and emojis capturing the mood and themes of the book I’d read for that week.
That day I spent in the hovel was a day when I could have been going on walks in the woods, charging my mental battery, reading more literary criticism on Things Fall Apart or contemplating a better way to build trust amongst my students so that they could have constructive conversations.
Instead, I’d spent the last three hours decorating. And my classroom was a hack job.
None of my most memorable teaching moments have been due to my decorations. That brilliant comment that one of my juniors made about Frankenstein or that stunning class discussion my sophomores had about To Kill a Mockingbird were not at all dependent on whether or not I’d filled the white space with enough signage. Perhaps, the fact that the desks were arranged in a circle that gave space for all of my students to see one another’s faces that day played a role. But really, that’s it.
That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate a beautiful classroom. One of my teacher friends, Tabitha, who has also, due to the circumstances of our profession, moved schools and classrooms several times, is the master of decor. Nearly every August, her latest configuration pops up on my Instagram feed: a welcoming amalgamation of desks, twinkling lights, lamps, reading nooks, painted shelves, area rugs, and inspirational signs, painted by her, all arranged with the strategic configuration of a professional interior designer and worthy of TikTok fame. (See it for yourself @mrs.ringler.)
And Tabitha’s aesthetic investments are not a mask for poor teaching: she’s one of the best educators I’ve had the pleasure of working with.
Now, I’m not Tabitha — I can’t walk into a stale classroom and envision a space built to inspire. I don’t have near the creativity or patience that she does. Sometimes, her teacher posts on social media lead me down a rabbit hole of teacher reels and TikToks, which conjure envy, self-doubt, and insecurity.
Teaching is a profession wrought with unknowns. You can’t know that a lesson is going to work for all of your students. You can’t always tell what your students, administrators, colleagues perceive in you, whether or not you're respected or despised. You can do everything that you think to do to help your students learn the curriculum; then, half of your students will tank the state standardized test anyway, because of circumstances out of your control.
So much of our experience in this profession is intangible. But a classroom is visible. A classroom can feel like a representation of our competence as a teacher. Of course, our classrooms should be safe, clean, and organized enough that we remember where we keep the pencils. Ideally, they should look welcoming enough. They should have enough desks — at some schools, even meeting that mark is a feat.
That’s why, even after years in the profession, I stress about making my classroom perfect. But the classrooms that I’ve tried too hard to beautify often end up like the lessons that I overthink. The decorations tear. The wall art looks tacky. I end up frustrated at the amount of time that I’ve wasted at the expense of doing what I actually wanted to do—like coming up with a better set of writing prompts or more thoughtful first-day-of-school activity.
First Year, everyone will tell you in this profession to “be authentic.” And of course, there’s plenty of nuance to that — maybe we’ll tackle that topic one of these weeks, too. But in a profession where persona is everything, where there’s pressure to perform at your best every day, remember that humanity is at the heart of teaching.
If it’s not in your character to decorate your classroom, don’t.
Instead, devote the time, energy, and passion into those things that are in character—those tasks that make you remember why you wanted to be a teacher in the first place, those activities that help you feel as inspired by teaching as you hope your students feel by learning.
Love,
Catherine
*All names listed, save for the author’s, are pseudonyms.