EDUCATION / SMART RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS AND PARENTS : It’s Not Cheap to Make These Walls Talk

When a new crop of second-graders enters Becky Cotton-Martin’s classroom at Mariposa Elementary today, the children will not lack for visual stimulation.

To the right of the classroom door, they’ll spy the beginnings of a word wall--a place where students will add words as they learn them. First will come hard-to-spell ones such as “would” and “said,” followed by phrases related to their course of study, such as “Jupiter.”

Another blue bulletin board will be almost blank, except for a propped-up stuffed monkey and the phrase “If I were Curious George, I would . . .” just waiting for the children’s answers. Above the kids will be hooks hanging from the ceiling, awaiting carefully decorated Halloween pumpkins and Thanksgiving turkeys.

Standard fare, to be sure. But classroom decoration requires more than skill with a stapler and a flair for construction paper, teachers say. It takes a desire to incorporate what kids are learning into visual form and an understanding of how kids learn.

It also necessitates a handful of trips to the learning supplies store, and sometimes, several hundred dollars from the teacher’s checking account.

After 36 years in the Brea Olinda Unified School District, Cotton-Martin has more than an inkling about what makes classroom decoration successful--kid participation--and what doesn’t.

“I want their work displayed,” she said recently, clad for messy work in shorts and tennis shoes. “A lot of people put up a lot of posters, but I want to display the students’ work. That gives them . . . pride in the room.”

Nearby, second-grade teacher Linda Zawyrucha eyeballed her almost vacant room and pondered the atmosphere before hanging rainbow-colored borders. Her room is grouped into centers. Over here is the computer center, with educational games. Nearby sits the bookcase, jammed with thin and thick tomes. Science activities are clumped together.

On the front white board--the modern-day replacement for the blackboard--is a representation of a desert savanna of tall grasses and lanky giraffes. This will be a springboard for discussions about story settings.

“I want a child-centered, cozy feeling,” Zawyrucha explained. “They’re tiny people, so I want lots of things for them to look at at eye-level.”

She also wants kids to enter the room with the knowledge that they’ll have fun here and learn a lot.

“I worked hard” to arrange the classroom, Zawyrucha said. “And they’ll work hard. Together, we’ll make a dynamite team.”

As teachers across Southern California set up aquariums, stock bookshelves and decide which seating arrangement is most conducive to their teaching style, they also rack up bills. Despite school district allocations for supplies, many instructors still find themselves chipping in $50 here and $75 there in the quest for the right classroom look and feel.

Seeking to offset that expense, many PTAs have created reimbursement funds to help soften out-of-pocket expenses. At Bathgate Elementary in Mission Viejo, for example, the PTA sets aside $150 per teacher.

“It’s really unfortunate teachers spend so much of their own money to enhance our kids’ education,” said PTA member Diane Peters, a mother of three. “So at our school, we try to reimburse for out-of-pocket expenses. . . . It’s a little over $5,000 a year--and that’s just a drop in the bucket for what the teachers put out.”

At least, Peters figures, the contribution makes for a nice “thank you.”