There are some questions that I have to help you get more suggestions: What age student is learning in this classroom? What subject(s) do you teach? How many students are in the classroom at a time? Are the same students there all day, or do different classes come to you throughout the day? What furniture do you have to accommodate in the space besides desk chairs? Are students’ (or your) coats and bags stored in the classroom or elsewhere? Where are you located? Does this design have to reflect social distancing, hand washing stations, etc. for COVID-19 precautions? Finally, can you provide a floor plan with dimensions?

Hi Jason, good work getting funding. My suggestion is hinges , dry erase boards (with backing panel strong enuff for hinge to fasten to wall) , and a variety of high saturation bright colors. plus simple organic room colors.

Its function first. My sense of it is.. the children will respond to an ever changing room. with 5-6 dry erase boards set on the wall. The dry erase boards are prepared as differentially colored on its reverse side. So lets say hour 1 is languages: gerunds, adverbs, conjugations etc ( board 1 is bright magenta on its rear side). ;; hour 2 comes along and the kids are focused on the material on board 2.. (which is a bright royal blue on its backing) , .As each subject ends , the board is flipped over to show a color and the kids index their memory to (i prospect ) more vividly reinforce photographic memory.. Once you choose your medium intensity attention colors, then you can decide the tone of the room. I would choose a light grey to make it feel spacious and then alter the texture. with dark grey and black-brown. almost giving the wall a cedar forest sort of floor to ceiling uneven striping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRrOMUeprqs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzdwUoR7R_k

A high schooler or college art student into metal/ alt rock and supplied with paint could do the custom job for free or portfolio credit/pics. #Immersion is the key. The dry erase boards can't be very high attention colors otherwise you'd distract the kids from what you're saying to them on topic. That nitty gritty is for you to ponder. hope it helps. If it were up to me I'd get rid of the desks and get couches ; make the kids copy notes on notepad and clipboard. Desks let the kids sulk into boredom on presumption its hard to see the kids in the back. When they're engaged and visible, they become more of the class more of the time.

How FABULOUS for you! Our high school just moved into a new building. The look of your room reflects what our teachers were given. We were told NO adornments of any sort. Nothing on widows, walls etc. The powers that be went with the idea we are a mini college and the rooms are all to be interchangeable with any sort of teacher using the room. The administration is totally unaware of the incidental learning opportunities classroom teachers have utilized for years, or the negative impact of sterile cold spaces on learning. Collectively the teachers and students hate it. Students do not find the new spaces welcoming or cozy. All the latest theories on education center around relationships. Sadly our building does the opposite as far as relationship building. What grade/subject is taught in this space? I work in a room that supports students with social/emotional trauma that interferes with learning. I added pictures of the students and circles and color and it made a huge impact.

@pds290 thanks for the quick reply.

- I teach English literature & creative writing

- We have different classes throughout a day, also we have around 12-14 kids per class

- Right now I do not think we need any additional furniture, however I`m open to some suggestions.

- Our heads still discussing COVID-19 precautions, I`ll tell as soon as I get informed.

I’ve been thinking about your classroom today. I was an interior designer until I made a career change and became a teacher and elementary school librarian, so your post hits close to my heart.

Some random thoughts - you have considerably more chairs in your room than you need, at least in the typical class size you indicate, which means you have enough room to arrange the chairs for more of a discussion circle than in rows such as you have now. That would be more inviting for the students and avoid the ability to hide in the back row.

It would be nice to reflect both your subject and your students in the room. One possibility I thought of is to have favorite quotations posted on the wall. This could be done quite elegantly using either custom wall decals in the upper areas of the walls (a DIY version would be to type it up as you want it to appear, project it on the walls, trace the letter and paint them). If you used the wide wall space between the windows to house a white board, the students could add their own favorite quotations that they find in the books that you read together throughout the semester. You could use it as an area to post particularly well written passages or phrases from your creative writing students.

Personally, I much prefer white boards to chalk boards, and the green of the boards in your room isn’t very appealing with the other colors in the room, so I might consider changing them out. That might eat a big chunk of your budget though.

Do you have to do all of this work during the summer, or might you save some of the budget for the fall, and ask your students what they think would improve the room? You’d certainly get more buy-in. I did several murals for my first library, and the whole school voted on which books they wanted to have represented. For weeks, I kept hearing kids arguing in hallways or on the playground about the merits of one book versus another as they lobbied for their favorites leading up to the final vote. I’ll include an image of one of the murals, although I’m not sure this project would translate to books at the level you teach.

I don’t love the yellow paint. If you decide to do wall decor, it might look better against a white “canvas” instead.

Your students are so lucky to have you working on this for them.