Heading back to the classroom-M/J (II)

Preparation starts early for teachers

By: Lacey Korevec
   MONROE — While students are busy doing back-to-school shopping and enjoying the last few days of their summer vacation, teachers at Woodland School are already in their classrooms, cutting, coloring, laminating, measuring and stapling.
   Bulletin boards are one of the most important, and time-consuming, parts of setting up a classroom, fourth-grade teacher Kerrilyn Dell said. Because they are one of the first things students notice when they enter the rooms on the first day of school, the boards have the ability to brighten both the classroom and students’ moods.
   "It gives them something to look at," she said. "It kind of gives them a comfortable feeling and makes the room a little more homey having their own work up there. So I think it’s important for them."
   One of Sue Podhurst’s bulletin boards, which her fifth-graders will help her complete when they enter her classroom Wednesday, is green with a big white piece of netting stapled over it. The letters above read "Go for the Goal."
   "What they do is they have these soccer balls and they write their goals for the year and they put their name on them and color them," she said. "Then, I laminate them and hang them up. It looks really cool when it’s done."
   Like most teachers, Ms. Podhurst gets bulletin board themes and ideas from magazines, the Internet and teaching stores.
   "If I see something that I like part of, I’ll tweak it to fit my needs," she said.
   Ms. Podhurst, who said she spends hours on preparing her boards, believes that they serve an important purpose in the classroom. Aside from just looking nice, they also help motivate keep students motivated.
   "You want them to have a nice warm welcoming classroom so that they’re comfortable all day because this is their home away from home," she said. "And kids need to have eye catching stuff and things that are interesting. And they love to be involved in the process, so that’s why I love to have something interactive for them. You have to make it a nice atmosphere for them."
   Alison North, who teaches fifth grade, has an ongoing bulletin board that she started five years ago. It’s a current events board, where the class can hang weekly news articles that they bring in and feel are important in terms of the rest of the year.
   Right now, the board is mostly blank, aside from a black-and-white newspaper-themed border and five handmade books hung up side by side on the bottom of it.
   "I started it in 2001-2002 because that’s when the World Trade Center happened and, honestly, when I took down the articles at the end of year, I just could not throw them away," she said. "It just bothered me, so that’s when I decided to make a book and every year, it just kind of progressed because the next year, for students, this was their favorite thing to read. So, in another 15 years, it will be a really nice archive of articles."
   Though the boards take a long time to create, all three of the teachers agreed on how useful they are.
   "It’s really quite a chore," Ms. North said, adding that she likes to begin working on them as soon as school lets out in June. "You work for hours and it feels like you’ve gotten nothing done. But it’s coming along."