High School History Classroom

Monday morning begins the fourth week of school! One month in! As a first year full-time teacher, it is refreshing to have made it this far. I mean, survived it this far. I am alive! In desperate need of some sleep and a time to rest my brain from school. 

For real though, the school year is going well. Lots of prayer and hard work are paying off, but I very much look forward to making it through this first year.

Before school started I totally forgot to take pictures of my classroom with something other than my phone. The pictures looked nice on a 4" screen, but not so much when I uploaded them to my laptop. 

Well, here is my high school history classroom. My goal is to make the room bright, colorful and fun with a subtle patriotic theme. But I didn't want the room to look tacky, overdone, or elementary. 

I knew I accomplished that when one of my students came up to me this past week to tell me how much she loves coming into my room. She said that it is exciting and colorful like an elementary classroom, but "grown up" and very educational. That part made me smile. It also made me very happy, because that is exactly what I was going for. If it inspired just one student, it was all worth it.  

The front of the room. I really wanted my students to focus on the fact that everything we do should be to the glory of God. I am really trying to put an emphasis on that each in my classes.

Although I don't teach my school's government class, I really wanted the students to be familiar with our government officials. So many times we hear about these people in the news and have absolutely no idea who they are or what they do. And... Sometimes there can be a lot of negativity in Christian circles regarding our government and it is my personal mission to change that with my students. Every Tuesday we are going to pray for these very important men and women. 

Continuing to move counter-clockwise... This is my door. I wasn't feeling as inspired as I should have with this door, but that is what I came up with. The hallways in my school are very narrow so the doors get pretty beat up as kids squeeze through with their book bags and two best friends. Basically, if you put something on the door, just know that it won't make it all year. Maybe that is why all of the high school doors have limited decorations?

My back wall. Not the most visually exciting, except for the flag, but I don't want the students staring at the back wall during class anyway. The goal was to trigger thoughts about our country and inspire patriotism every time a student walks into my room. I am still building up my collection of decor and for now those posters seemed to be the best. I would have preferred to leave the flag by itself except that it looked super lonely. 

This "Map Skills" bulletin board is one of the only bulletin board sets that I own. It worked really well with the first unit of my geography class, but it will need replaced soon as we just took our first test over the map skills unit. 

Last year I decorated my classroom/office in all owls. I had one class in there, so I just did whatever I wanted with it. Well, now the kids know me for my owls and they really are an obsession of mine, so this room just had to have a few owls in it. Maybe later in the year, I will get desperate enough to reuse the owls again so soon. 

The final corner of my room is my desk area and filing cabinets. I will save those pictures for another day.