My Classroom

This is my second year teaching in my current district. I was in another district for four years before that. Even though I travel to two schools, I do have one home school where the classroom is mine to organize and set up the way I want. I am extremely lucky to have an amazing room that was built specifically for art, and I have the equipment necessary to do my job well. This was not the case in my old district (where I taught at 4-6 schools. Some had me teaching on the cart, some in a portable with no water, some in a glorified walk in closet shared with aftercare.)... so I know how lucky I am to have a space like this. Over the years I have changed how I set up my room to make it more user friendly for both me and the students. Also... I like my classroom to be colorful and... well... pretty. I want to have a beautiful environment that excites my artists. Here are some images of my classroom:

This is the board outside of my classroom. I typically leave this board up all year, so I usually get a little carried away with it. Each bubble at the bottom says "Art is a language the whole world speaks" in different languages. I got the inspiration for this board from artgirlproject.

This is the view from my desk. I have six tables, with six seats at each table. Most classes are small enough that I only use four or five of them, but they're there if I need them. I number tables and numbers are hanging from the ceiling and are also on their supply buckets. 

This is my desk area. Nothing terribly exciting, but I am lucky enough to have a projector and a document camera, which makes a huge difference and should be a requirement for all art teachers to have. 

This board is a new addition to my room this year. I have always had those little elements and principles posters that they sell. And while they were totally fine, I felt that they were a little dull, and the examples were quite small and hard for the kids to see from their seats. So, I created my own board. I'm pretty happy with it. I took inspiration for this from youngartlove.

I make two tape lines where I have students line up at the end of class. There are two because some classes don't fit on one and I don't want them squished back by my closet door. Kids know that if they go to line up and there's no more tape for them to stand on they go to the second line. I dismiss them by table numbers (tables sitting the quietest get called first, etc). 

This is my side board. As you'll see... I got a little excited with the painter's tape this year. Over the summer my mom showed me how she uses painters tape to organize her board, and I came back and did that... and then kept finding more and more places that painters tape could help me keep things organized. Woohoo! Anyway... on this board I have my class schedule on the left (teacher, grade, and time), and I write the learning goal for each grade on the right. We use Marzano in my district, so it's an expectation that we always have learning goals posted.

This is where I keep student work. There's one drawer for each day of the week. I keep active work in the drawers, and then when a project is finished and graded I move it up to that class' cubby. They get quite full by the end of the year. 

In each drawer I have table folders for each class. They have the teacher's name and their table number written on them. This is a nice, organized beginning of the year drawer... believe me, by the end of the year things will not be looking so nice anymore. 

I have a supply bucket for each table. This year I upgraded to buckets that hold six cups, pretty exciting to me! Haha. Each bucket has the basics... pencils, erasers, crayons, colored pencils, and a pencil sharpener (I take it out for kindergarten). That leaves one empty cup for me to throw things as needed (scissors, rulers, sharpies, etc). More evidence of my painter's tape excitement this year. I tell kids that their bucket is like a car and each one has a special "parking spot". They love that and I no longer have buckets out of order, or one top of each other the way I used to!

Next to the bucket parking spots there's a spot for table folders. This is the first year I've done this and I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner! The table captains used to always bring me their folders at the end of class, which was.... well, a mess. This is great because after a class leaves I can just scoop them up and put them back in their drawer. So so so much better. 

I use "messy mats" in art to minimize the amount of mess that gets on the table. This year I have separate messy mats for marker and paint. I found that my paint messy mats get wavy and impact the result when kids are just outlining or coloring with marker. As you can see... more painter's tape to show kids where they belong. 

I LOVE my drying rack. When I got my new job and my assistant principal took me to my classroom for a first time I totally lost my mind with happiness. I couldn't maintain my professionalism or maturity and did a full on happy dance when I saw that drying rack. The school I was at before had a tiny, rusty, bent drying rack. I was working in a TINY classroom that was shared with the aftercare program, and there were two giant refrigerators in the back of the classroom for the aftercare snacks. Because the room was so small there was nowhere for the drying rack, so I had to put it on top of the fridge. I had to stand on a table and kids would come hand me their papers. And of course it only had enough space for one class' work, so I had to empty it out constantly. So... needless to say I did a big ol', embarrassing happy dance when I saw that baby. I love it so much I think I might need to name it. 

So... this is my space. I love it. It might seem overly organized, but to me every minute that I have my students in art counts, and the more organized things are the smoother class goes and the more time they have to work on their artwork, which is my ultimate goal.