teachupsidedown: creating a safe & effective classroom environment//even in high school

I have been teaching for 16 years. Well, really I’ve been teaching my entire life. When I was little I had a classroom in our basement. When people visited, they asked my mom if she was homeschooling.

I had everything – bulletin boards, student desks, shelves of teacher’s editions and worksheets…my dream came true when a friend of ours retired from teaching and gifted me her entire collection of books and elementary items. I loved to decorate the room and fill the walls with color and words and comfort – because it made me feel at home.

When I began my college training to be a high school English teacher, I began looking for ways to decorate my classroom as a first year teacher. Time and time again, all I could find were elementary decorations, meant for little kids. All the posters were multi-colored with childish fonts. The borders were…