Decorating on a dime: Teachers reveal their spruce-up secrets

Teachers often have to pay for their room decorations out of their own pockets; what are their tricks, and what makes for effective decor?

Lindsey Schwank has been teaching at Westside Elementary School for eight of her 10 years as an educator. She is one of many teachers who face the challenge of decorating on a dime.

The second-grade dual-language teacher has seen a spectrum of classrooms ranging from off-the-wall to just plain tacky, she said. One piece of advice she’d give every teacher is that they don’t have to break the bank to have fun, interactive decorations for their classrooms.

“The best, most creative, out-of-the-box classroom decor I’ve seen was, years ago, a teacher had a palm tree, and it felt like I was on vacation,” Schwank said.

However, her classroom design is a little more simple and swanky, she said.

“I decide to decorate my classroom by picking a color and a theme,” Schwank said. “My base color is always purple for the purple Wildcats mascot. And as the school changes its theme, I change a bulletin board to match the theme of the year.”

Frontier Elementary School fourth-grade teacher Lauren Brittain’s strategy is a little different. She decides to decorate her whole classroom based on the school’s yearly theme.

“This year’s theme is ‘Wild about Learning,’ so everything is animal prints and stuff,” Brittain said. “I needed a love seat for my classroom so I posted on Facebook and multiple people offered to donate one to me. I painted it black and put a leopard skin cover on it.”

Brittain also recommends Pinterest and picking things up second-hand to save money.

“We use a lot of our own money to purchase things, so I look for bargains,” she said. “I go to a lot of garage sales.”

Schwank also looks for bargains at local stores.

“I use Hobby Lobby coupons and wait for sales each week especially during the summer,” she said. “I am always looking and always stock up.”

Dana Mayberry, a fourth-grade math teacher at Polk Elementary School in Richwood, has an even more frugal style of decorating her classroom.

In her seven years of teaching elementary school, her favorite being third grade, she has gone from spending a lot out of pocket to learning how to take advantage of school resources. One of her tricks is to pick her own theme to complement the school’s yearly theme.

“The school’s theme last year was ‘Building at high levels and learning together,’ so I picked a LEGO theme,” Mayberry said.

Mayberry used school supplies provided by the school, such as differently colored cardstock, and printed LEGO images on them. On them, she wrote the names of her students and put them up on the wall.

“I used the LEGOs as a learning tool,” she said. “I give the student one minute to work on their addition or subtraction and every time they surpassed their last attempt, I would move their LEGO to a different color. If they mastered their addition or subtraction tables, I would invite them to eat lunch with me.”

Despite Brittain’s and Schwank’s decorating style of searching for the best bargain, Mayberry sticks with what is available to her through the school.

“You don’t need to spend money. If there’s something you need, like instructional décor, talk to the principal,” she said. “Much of what you need can be found at the school.”