Classroom setup is by far one of the most irritating, fun, and important parts of being a teacher that doesn’t involve the actual act of, you know, teaching.

You are essentially given a blank slate and you need to make it functional, welcoming, organized, kid-friendly, and all in about…5 hours depending on your district’s back to school schedule.

I enjoy setting up a room and I don’t like to be rushed, so I like to go in towards the end of summer and get it all done before back to school week. Normally I don’t do being at school when I’m not being paid to be there, however, this is what I’ve learned in my nearly 15 years of teaching: for my sanity, I need it done before I come back to work, officially.

So let’s take a dive into the past – 6 classrooms ago – and talk about what works, what doesn’t, and what I have learned.

So this is actually my 3rd classroom. And I have so many fond memories of this room (it had a closet, cabinets, and it was MASSIVE), but whoa buddy this design would make me nuts now. First off, the good: the posters aren’t bad. And I still have the crate seats. But there is so much color and pattern between the fabric on the bulletin boards, the map carpet, the library labels, the box labels, the fabric covers for the crate seats, the baskets…and the pocket charts in every color know to man. It’s too much. It’s not cohesive. Also I’m super proud of myself for buying white containers (more on that later) but I have a feeling that was because of budget and lack of access to any sort of other bucket type…

Oh, and peep the clip chart (EEEEK) next to the cart with student supplies and such…so many lessons learned (and before you come at me, this room was mine like 10 years ago…and I don’t think the clip chart made it through that year).

Now let’s look at the same room, but four years later – and this is one of my favorite classrooms of all time.

Okay so I have to actually post the video of this classroom because I don’t actually have any photos of it. This was a LOT of work. I redid every surface and painted. I built stuff. And it looked awesome (still WAY too much color and pattern for my taste now but it did turn out great). Watch from 9:40-9:57 below to see the overview.

So this room was organized, huge, peaceful, and well set-up. I still think about that drawer garage I made…I still might may another one for my new classroom but more on that later. What worked in this room was I did a play on flexible seating. The kids kept about 90% of their stuff in those three drawer sterelite carts. I had tables and put baskets for storage under their chairs (I zip-tied the small, flat baskets from the dollar tree and they worked great.)

The blue accent wall made my bulletin boards stand out beautifully and who doesn’t love a good string light? I got those on clearance at Walmart and they lasted until this year (which isn’t bad considering that means they moved 4 times…). There are still some issues – like I would not do flexible seating now (GASP!) believe it or not…there isn’t any evidence showing that it makes any impact on the kids, in fact it might be bad for them, because they lack a sense of permanence in the classroom. I’m not here to wade into the debate about whether or not you should do it – I’m a firm believer in doing what works for you. It didn’t work for me so I didn’t do it again. If it had worked, I’d have continued to use it. I still think I have too much stuff on the walls – and too many different colors and patterns.

I was so sad to leave that classroom, and let me tell you, moving schools was a whole lot. I also went from that large, beautiful classroom with all the storage to a much, much, much smaller room. So I had to leave a lot of things behind or get rid of them – which was super sad.

And while I liked that classroom I moved into (despite the fact that it was super small), I actually have almost no footage or pictures of it because I was only in it from September – March (hello global shut down…) . So I think we’ll stop here before moving on to my next three classrooms over the next 4 years, and we’ll wrap it up with a top ten tips for classroom setup.