When I first began teaching at School A, we had metal stripes to hang student work in the hallways. Some hallways had the strips with cork for push pins. Other hallways had tackless metal paper holders. Both were great when teachers wanted to quickly put up displays. THEN, one year a new fire marshall came to inspect the school. The school was written up for having hallway displays that were a fire hazard. [If one paper caught fire, the fire had a track to run along throughout all the hallways in the school.] At this point, bulletin boards were purchased for the hallways. Teachers were counted. This included specialty teachers such as art, music, P.E., librarian as well as all special ed teachers. A board was purchased for each three teachers.
Guidelines for these bulletin boards included the following:
- Nothing could be displayed in the hallway unless it was on a bulletin board.
- The bulletin boards must be changed each month. With three teachers responsible for each board, this meant each teacher was responsible for three boards during the school year.
This works because two months of the school year other things are displayed. The year starts out with the boards decorated by the summer daycare program, the data team's analytical data from the standardized testing [charts and graphs], or some type of special project. One year every teacher brought in a picture from when s/he was in elementary school. A caption titled "Can You Guess Who This Is?" made the boards really fun for the students.
During the month of standardized tesing all academic displays must come down. The boards are filled with motivational slogans, charts displaying competitions for best attendance between classrooms, and so on.
- The bulletin boards must display academic work. The teaching standard that was used to teach the skill for the work must also be displayed. This meant teachers no longer displayed cool art projects unless the artwork went with a skill such as writing.
