RTBC Day Five: Welcome to my classroom!

Reflective Teaching Blog Challenge – Day Five: Post a picture of your classroom. Describe what you see, and what you don’t see that you’d like to.

So, this is the classroom I teach in! Er, rather, these are the classrooms I teach in. At my school, the students stay in the same room while all of the teachers rotate throughout the day. As a result, neither myself nor my fellow teachers has a subject-designated classroom. However, every room is equiped with a tv monitor and computer cable, as well as ethernet, so using PowerPoints and the internet on my school laptop for class is no problem.  My students and I also interact with the chalkboard quite a bit. The desks and chairs are very lightweight, so they move easily, allowing for relatively quick restructing of class set-up. And a wall of windows overlooking the play yard lets in plenty of natural light during the day, so the kids don’t feel quite like they’re in a dungeon, at least!

While I am grateful to have access to modern teaching technology and classrooms that are big enough to move around in, there is a lot more I wish I had to offer my students. If I were working in my own classroom, a room that was all about learning English, I could create a much more specialized, stimulating environment. I would LOVE to decorate the walls with calendars depicting days of the week and months of the year, a weather board, and posters of basic responses to questions like “How are you?,” complete with pictures, of course. Each class could have its own section of the room, or a bulletin board, where good work could be featured or a new word, displayed. One corner of the room could be filled with shelves of English books, magazines and newspapers, and perhaps a comfortable chair or two. And, scattered around the room would be the many different games and materials I use to get kids engaged and excited about the lesson.

That’s the dream. And maybe when I move to the new school in February that will happen…maybe. For now I’ll try to make the best of the situation I’m in by creating more mobile versions of the above posters/calendars. That way I can take them to each class. The games and activities I create will continue to pile themselves up on my desk and spill out from my drawers. And some day soon I’ll ask my co-teacher about the school budget and how much, if any, room there is for English literature and media. Baby steps!