As the school year is getting back to full swing, the desolate classrooms of the summer are once more being filled with furnishings. With some new teachers settling in at Seabury, it is interesting to see how they decorate what veteran teacher Sonja Czarnecki calls “their home away from home.”
Sophomore Alex Barker thinks that new Spanish teacher, Krista Meisch, has fulfilled Czarnecki’s words. “I think she wants a house-like and cozy-feeling place but with a Spanish flair to it,” says Barker, interpreting his Spanish classroom. He does note that while decor can be a distraction in class, the pros outweigh the cons. “I feel like it helps you understand who the teacher is and what they are going to teach.” In this case, Barker has the impression that she will “help you really understand not just the language but also the culture. I think she really just wants you to improve and get better at [Spanish],” he says.
Similarly, sixth grader Rex Pubill has a positive view on classroom furnishings. He thinks that all the signs and posters in Ms. Steinbacher’s classroom “say a lot about her curiosity and her spirit.”
Salem Taha in the sixth grade echoes Pubill’s message about what her decor means to him. “She has real dedication to science and it also shows how she’s not like other science teachers…she actually cares about her students,” she says.
New faculty member Ms. Steinbacher herself says that she definitely had a mission with her classroom stylings. “Something that was important to me was to have a bright [space like] these awesome windows that we have here…I think I have the best view out of the school. We’ve got this outdoor learning area and this pond here. And light, a lot of light.” She says that her design is intentional. “I wanted to have things all around the room that were indicative of science and science to me is about questioning and curiosity.” Using her decor, she wants her students to understand that “what we do in this classroom is very experiential…it’s about exploration and engaging with science as opposed to just learning a bunch of facts and data,” a plan that her sixth grade students have definitely picked up on.
Seabury’s newest teachers seem to be making themselves at home and are already impacting the students with their decorative selections.
