by Diana Senechal
With the beginning of the school year just weeks or days away, many teachers will be returning early to set up their bulletin boards and classrooms. That is an exciting time—except that there’s so much stuff to put up. In addition to organizing the room and making it inviting, teachers must put all the required teacher-made pieces in place, lest an omission be noted in a walkthrough observation.
Growing up, I attended eight different schools—public and private, progressive and traditional, in the United States and abroad. I have sat in bare and decorated classrooms, and I found something appealing in both. In elementary school, I usually preferred cheery, colorful places; in high school, I liked the calm of sparse rooms. But today’s classrooms are often neither cheery nor sparse. Across the grades, teachers are expected to cover the classroom walls with charts, lists, standards, rubrics, tasks, reminders, and student work. The argument is that children will learn more in a “print-rich” environment.
There is basis for the “print-rich” argument, especially in the elementary grades. Exposure to print, combined with explicit instruction, can boost students’ reading considerably. But even in kindergarten classrooms, the “print-rich” factor can be overdone. It is difficult to take in anything when there’s so much staring at you. One becomes immune to posters on strategies and processes (which often aren’t “rich” to begin with). Also, there is a hint of condescension in such overdecoration, as though students could not learn without prompts coming from every angle. Why so much stuff? There is something strong about a room that doesn’t protest too much, and it sets a good example for the students.
Even displays of student work may not always help students. If student work is posted just because it must be posted, it loses meaning. Few students, teachers, or administrators actually take time to read it. If it is on a hallway bulletin board, students may deface it (intentionally or not) when rushing by. Moreover, as David Riesman noted decades ago in The Lonely Crowd, the public display of student work can promote sameness of topic and voice. The treatment of all writing as publishable or displayable does not give students a chance to take risks, learn from mistakes, struggle with syntax, structure, and style, and work out ideas.
In addition, there is a problem of resources; classroom displays take time and supplies. Locating the appropriate materials—bulletin board paper, borders, staples and stapler and staple remover, construction paper, markers, and so forth—is only the beginning. There are the inevitable errors: lopsided letters, bad stapling, the omission of a required rubric. Finding space on the walls can be a challenge; it is common to see clotheslines strung from wall to wall, with student work hanging from them. If you’re short, you may have trouble hanging things up in high places; if you’re tall, you may find yourself bumping into the clotheslines. Then there is the wear and tear: items falling down from the walls, taking pieces of paint along. After a few rounds of decorating, the room looks more dilapidated than ever.
Of course, no one wants a dreary classroom. It is exciting to enter a room and figure out immediately what is taught there. Sometimes this is conveyed invisibly; a good high school course has its own character, and there may be no need for displays at all. At other times, displays have a place. There may be descriptions of chemistry experiments, or biographies of composers. Some student work on the walls can be impressive and inspiring. A classroom display may reflect ongoing discussions; teachers may post questions intended to provoke further thought.
But what about all those charts and lists that are needed? Well, we have to consider whether they truly live up to their mandatory status. Take, for instance, the charts of the “writing process,” which hang on many classroom walls. They do not apply to every situation or student. Yes, writing often consists of five stages: pre-writing, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing. But within this, there is a great deal of variation: one may revise a piece at a late stage, and one might not publish it at all. If students have substantial and regular writing assignments, they need no chart to remind them of the basic steps. By contrast, vocabulary lists, chronologies, and scientific and mathematical formulas may well be useful.
To have good schools, we need focus and simplicity. Teachers should be able to concentrate on planning and delivering lessons; students, on learning the material and developing ideas. Schools should have the gumption to sort the essential from the extraneous. If schools stopped requiring the display of charts, lists, tasks, rubrics, and student work, they would have room for interesting displays. They would also have greater calm, on the walls and elsewhere. To do good work, one must have room for it; one cannot be crammed and crowded to the brim.
Diana Senechal has written for American Educator, Education Week, Educational Leadership, American Educational History Journal, and numerous blogs. She holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale and taught for four years in New York City public schools. Her book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in November.
Wonderful points, and as Dr. Senechal acknowledges, there are numerous potential benefits in displaying student work and maintaining a visually stimulating environment. But the key word is “potential.” The problems always start when these things are codified by the ed establishment–which is forever misappropriating mere insight as scientifically proven “best practice”–and mandated in teachers’ job-performance evaluations.
I believe Diane Ravitch has also argued elsewhere that schools facilities themselves–the buildings and grounds–should be attractive places. How about a little less pressure on teachers to put lipstick on pigs (i.e., decorate their overcrowded, badly ventilated, and sometimes even hazard-ridden classrooms) and more pressure on states and schoolboards to build and maintain comfortable, artful, elegant-looking environments to begin with?
Comment by James O'Keeffe — August 11, 2011 @ 5:28 pm
I’ve always been a little perplexed to hear about schools where teachers are required to put certain things on bulletin boards in certain ways. I’ve never worked in a school where we were required to do this, thank goodness. This year we’re moving into a brand-new, beautiful high school and have been strongly encouraged NOT to put up a bunch of junk on the walls, but to use the bulletin boards only and keep the place looking nice.
I never thought that putting reminders on the walls as posters would work – I largely ignored them myself as a student, except to note how outdated and ugly they usually were, or how patronizing the “inspirational” posters seemed.
I put up a few prints of real artwork and quotes from literature the students will actually read throughout the year. Yes, the cost of putting up all the bling and flair is prohibitive, but even the educational reminders, in excess, become something like a persistent, visual ache with no real composition or theme. I think I would go a little crazy in this environment, and feel badly for teachers for whom this sort of thing is both mandated and assessed.
Comment by redkudu — August 12, 2011 @ 8:41 am
Finally someone has made some sense of this issue! I teach students with attention and learning disabilities. I must give them assignments and post their work. This does not help theses students who at best never look at what is around the room and most often is a distraction to them hindering their learning. My students need a plain classroom rooms with posters and clotheslines filled with student work overwhelm them, but administration insists that this must be done. This is a major issue in many schools the focus is in the wrong place! Even posting the lesson questions can be too much for a student with attention problems.
Comment by Peggy Finnegan — August 12, 2011 @ 9:49 am
[...] Across the grades, teachers are expected to cover the classroom walls with charts, lists, standards, rubrics, tasks, reminders, and student work. The argument is that children will learn more in a “print-rich” environment, writes Diana Senechal at Core Knowledge. [...]
Pingback by Is the Writing on the Wall for Busy ‘Print Rich’ Classrooms? | The Moral Liberal — August 12, 2011 @ 10:50 am
But just yesterday Steve Brill reported on visiting a classroom that he was impressed with. His KIPP host complained about four things the teacher did wrong. One of the problems was the bulletin board wasn’t done just right.r
Comment by john thompson — August 15, 2011 @ 12:55 pm
Ugh.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — August 15, 2011 @ 12:58 pm
Yes, and the other three were similarly banal: three students’ eyes were wandering; the teacher turned her back to the class once when writing on the blackboard; and the reading log was incomplete.
I responded to this particular part of the article (also in the book) in a letter to the editor. I have written a review of the book as well.
Comment by Diana Senechal — August 15, 2011 @ 3:24 pm
Frankly the Brill comments are more interesting in this post. Have you thought that Brill was quoting the principal a bit ironically? I have not read the book, but listening to him on a Diane Rehm today I was struck by his willingness to say more support is needed. Yes he said the middle ground of teachers need to get better, but to object to that is is frankly to feed the system do mediocrity.
Comment by Charlotte Osborn — August 16, 2011 @ 9:37 pm
How to adorn the classroom has been something that I’ve decided to relegate to the “battles I’m not choosing” pile, as I think many teachers have, but I’m so glad you write about it.
We need so much more of the thoughtful but common sense you offer.
Comment by Rachel Levy — August 17, 2011 @ 10:19 am
As a math teacher, I have always liked “print-rich”, maybe because of all the formulas and calculator procedures. However, I think a very large class is calmer when bulletin boards have blue backgrounds. Red and orange are more stimulating, but in a crowded room, I would opt for calm any time.
Comment by Betty Dunn — August 23, 2011 @ 8:02 am
I teach middle school world cultures. I try to put only posters of current study, world religions, maps, etc, rotating them out often. Have you looked lately at kindergarten and lower elementary classrooms? There is hardly an inch of wall not covered. VISUAL OVERLOAD. Why do colleges of education promote all these “centers” and wall art? Sheesh. By the time they arrive in middle school, with all the visual overload and standardized and multiple choice papers, it’s hard to overcome. And now in Texas we have over 40 days of standardized testing built into the school calendar, not to mention more crowded classrooms with the terrible budget pushed through by Perry led legislature.
Comment by Texas teacher — October 22, 2011 @ 10:56 pm