A little background about my learning spaces:

I advise the school TV show and the yearbook at Madison East High School, and have been trying to get a newspaper class back on the books for the past six years. They are letting me teach the newspaper prereq: Writing for Media as a semester class, second semester of this school year and I’m hoping we can publish 2-3 issues from this first class.

The Madison Metro School District just completed a 4-year renovation project at all four of the high schools, which included my teaching space as well. I had originally toured the East High studio space and media classroom, and wanted to set-up something similar at another school but never gained the support I needed. When the job opened up at East, I applied in part because of the studio and existing school culture, and have been here since the 2018-2019 school year. This is my fourth school, in my third state over the course of 22 years of teaching (so far).

So, I inherited a studio space across the hall from my classroom computer lab. They took out the double doors and bigger glass windows in the remodel, sadly. I was able to arrange the space so as to work around the potential supervisory “blind spots.” While other classrooms got all new furniture as part of the renovations, I kept my old tables and 70’s wooden desk, and it was worth it. Instead, the studio gained an anchor desk with high top chairs, a “coffee talk” style set of two upholstered chairs and coffee table, two custom-built tripod organizers on wheels and some cabinets for all the equipment. My favorite furniture update is the tall charging cabinet on wheels. I can lock up the cameras and charge them at the same time, and because it is on wheels, I can choose to store it in my office space or in the main classroom space.

After we got back into the room, with freshly painted walls and brighter lights on a motion sensor, I made a ‘wish list’ of items like a hand vacuum to clean the carpets, a high top table my editors can sit at when planning and just as another work space, a large dry erase “sticker” to turn a large board room style table into a collaboration table for brainstorming meetings away from the computers, and some fun lighting and decor to give the space some warmth. My assistant principal had just remodeled her own kitchen by herself and offered to build the high top table with leftover materials, which was so cool. Friends from all over the country, bought items from that ‘wish list’ I created, and I also came across a few pieces at thrift stores and the annual student ceramics sale.

Personal Classroom Favorites:

• The charging cabinet
• The old Chromebook cart I repurposed for drawing tablets for Graphic Design
• The camera & SD card management system I copied from my predecessor
• Our tripod organizers
• The soundbooth and podcasting set-up I got when someone at the admin building said, “I have a big chunk of money to spend and want it to be something we can add at all four high schools. You can pilot it.”
• Our teleprompter
• The collaboration space I’ve been able to create at the back of the room
• (in progress) Collection of large Bulletin Boards – the paint they used in the remodel is so easy to clean that nothing will stick to it for more than a week or two including hot glue, permanent glue, Gorilla tape, teacher tape, and the tape they use to affix house numbers to siding. Not surprisingly, the 50-something peel-and-stick corkboard squares the district bought me to create a giant bulletin board also did not stick.

Some of my favorite “fun” items include:

• A thrifted disco ball
• An expanding, light-up plastic sword with a dinosaur head (it’s my pointer when I’m teaching from a large projector screen)
• Fake ivy and other fake plants
• A few thrifted neon lights
• Our class pet – a taxidermy “squirrel” I bought on ebay from China in 2021…. We’re not sure that it’s actually a squirrel. It may be rabbit fur glued to a stump. Whatever, it’s weird and we love Beefy, even if the kids named the squirrel Beef Tenderloin and refer to it as my “Wish Squirrel”
• Heads – there is a barbering class that throws these heads away after the students have finished cutting and styling them. Instead of throwing them into the trash, someone suggested they donate them to my space. And, they have made at least one appearance in an episode of Tower TV.
• Window/door stickers – The classroom computer lab is on a ½ floor above the 1st floor but not connected to the 2nd or 3rd floor of the school. There are no windows. It felt like a sad little dark, concrete brick encased room, so I added fake stickers and more lights. Now, when we have to hide in a closet during lock down drills, we can at least take the door to Narnia to get there.

Random kids come into my room at lunch and other open times, and often ask in wonder “What class is this??” Or, I hear “This is a whole vibe.” I’m not sure exactly what vibe, but it sounds like a good thing.

Is my room messy? Always. Is the studio often a messy? More than likely.

Do the kids feel at home in the space? Oh yeah.