Saturated colors, dull colors, bean bags and even the poster boards hanging on the wall make up the atmosphere we call a classroom. Comfort and a sense of home establish the desire to learn, giving students a reason to enter a classroom. A dull, boring room with a lack of decor hinders learning and connection. Classroom decor influences how students learn and how they view their teachers, which connects back to the overarching idea: schools should encourage teachers to decorate their classrooms for visual appeal to influence positivity.
A nicely decorated classroom tends to find a special place in students’ hearts. The sense of belonging established leads to success because every individual will feel comfortable, especially at school. According to Edutopia, teachers who decorate their classrooms foster creativity and connection. Additionally, adding murals or classwork-decorated walls done by students can create a sense of accomplishment in students, especially when their work gets recognition from the teacher. This contributes to the bonds built between students and teachers, allowing them to trust one another. Bonds developed by teachers and students play crucial roles in a successful environment, making a grand difference in how students recognize a teacher and their classroom and facilitates positive opinions that can encourage student engagement to skyrocket.
As for some classes, such as electives, many teachers tailor decor to their subject. An art classroom tends to have colorful and creative decor, while a history class tends to have flags, maps and relevant historical artifacts. According to Edutopia, tailoring to a specific class can give students a feel of the classroom and make them favor the class above others. Decorations that are relevant to the content learned in class play a role in piquing students’ interests and give a classroom character that appeals to an individual’s eye. According to Tynker, using detailed visuals that relate to content can help students grasp difficult concepts and present a learning aid when needing to reference past knowledge. This concept, often referred to as visual literacy, enables students to interpret visual information and makes them aware of the purpose of experiencing images on a deeper level. Leveraging visual literacy helps students succeed in classrooms because it gives them an immersive experience within the classroom environment through diagrams, maps, word walls and various other visual representations. Students can reference back to material when they hit a roadblock on a specific topic. Through tailored decoration, students have the opportunity to experience a content-targeted environment that can introduce them to the general topic covered in class.
Opponents criticize decorating a classroom to better suit student needs and attention; however, while neutral colors can benefit students by directing their attention to the main focus of a classroom, they cannot create a sense of belonging and ensue boredom, a feeling that leads an individual in a continuous pursuit for something interesting, according to the National Library of Medicine. Constantly returning to a classroom that’s dull can cause a student to lack motivation and further hinder their learning rather than benefiting them. It’s important to consider the negatives associated with a dull classroom and how it leads to a decrease in productivity and engagement from students. Many classrooms, such as holding rooms, or in this case the classrooms that host TCC courses, lack color and decoration. The lack of decor pushes a certain perspective on classrooms and teachers, making students steer away from classes that have a reputation for being boring and difficult – even if that’s not necessarily the case. With this, teachers should also consider the overstimulation from overdecorating a classroom. An environment that has eye-popping colors left and right can make focusing on one thing difficult. In a study conducted by psychologists, students placed within a highly decorated room performed poorly on tests that connected to attention and memory, concluding that too much visual stimuli can overwhelm students and cause them to decrease in performance when it comes to school work. According to Visual Edge, lighting plays a key role in the brain’s ability to focus, especially for younger individuals. Dim lighting can make learning more difficult because it can affect a student’s ability to focus when work becomes illegible, slowing down the brain from retaining information to the best of its ability. While dim lighting can have effects on students, bright lighting can lead to overstimulation and distract students from the focus material. Finding the perfect equilibrium between too much decoration and too little decoration plays importance in helping students focus while also finding comfort in their surroundings.
If teachers find the perfect balance for their classroom’s aesthetic, then students will flourish in the environment because it will prevent overstimulation and boredom, which are leading causes of poor performance of students, according to the National Library of Medicine. Therefore, schools should encourage teachers to steer away from adding too much or too little decoration to their classrooms to positively influence student opinions and promote success.
