School is starting again. A year ago I would have predicted “The Brenda’s” would currently be discussing how our friends are preparing their classrooms for the year while we were engaging in other activities. Life is definitely unpredictable and we are both decorating classrooms- one for real and another in miniature.
Brenda Pendleton and I retired from the same high school science department on the same day. We began to be referred to around school as “The Brenda’s” a few years ago. Not only do we have the same name, our mothers have the same name, which we only discovered after about 25 years of friendship! We have had lots of fun together in and out of school and expect more fun is coming.
Retirement came with some big changes for Brenda. She moved to another state. She built a new home. She became a daily part of her grandchildren’s lives. Brenda had been thinking of a part time job and considered applying for an aide position at the the charter school her granddaughter hoped to attend. Teacher friends predicted she would not like being an aide after being the teacher in charge of the classroom for so many years. She settled on a different job outside of education instead.
Brenda once told me that she was called to teaching. She had chosen a different course of study in college and it wasn’t going as smoothly as she hoped. After she heeded the call to become a teacher, obstacles were removed and her studies became easy. It agree she is meant to teach because she was offered a teaching position at the charter school for which she had not actually applied. She called me from the car saying she was just asked to come in to discuss it and was heading that way. Should she return to the classroom? She thought she was done with that. We weighed possible pros and cons of the two jobs and I wished her well in the meeting.
She called later to describe her school tour and fill me in on job specifics. The days were longer than we worked before but three weeks of the month were only four days long. Neither of us knew such schedules existed. Her student load would be 47 students throughout the entire day. One of my Chemistry periods- thankfully it was my all-time favorite class- had been packed with 42 students! They agreed to allow her to take time off for a trip she had already planned. She would get service credit for all of her prior teaching experience toward a second retirement. It was obvious she made right choice to join the Midland Academy staff.
There was one catch. This was a sixth-grade science position, not high school or even junior high. Although she would be teaching almost the same curriculum as before, sixth graders are very different creatures than high schoolers. Grade-wide systems for behavioral management are implemented. Classroom organization and decoration is a key part of the system. She was in new territory with these younger kids.
Although I was not missing readying my room for a new school year, I was enjoying our discussions about school policies and how they would be integrated into her classroom. I had started building a room intended for future miniature projects, one of which is a science lab classroom. Wouldn’t it be fun to use the room to make a classroom including elements of her room? It couldn’t be a replica, as I’d only seen a photo of a tiny corner of her room and the floorplan of my room was set. I’d listen carefully, build it according to what she told me and include a few special additions of my own for her to find. It would be fun to surprise her, and see how our rooms compared at the end.
I had already built two miniature science lab tables from kits by Hasegawa in anticipation of my other project. It was a new experience for me to build plastic models. I was pleased with the level of detail so I decided to order three student desk kits to make nine desks and a teacher desk. One thing I learned about building plastic models is if you want it to look good, you will be using an emery board to file off a lot of tiny little nubs! Hasegawa also made a neat folding table so I ordered it too because it was a good deal.
After kicking around a few different theme ideas for the group organization in her classroom, Brenda settled on using Avatar: The Last Airbender. She is a film buff so it seemed a great fit for her. I knew she was on the right track and her students would enjoy the theme when her granddaughter very patiently gave me a phone education on the names of the elemental powers. Four elements is a great science connection too. The problem for me was nine is not divisible by four. Twelve is divisible by four. I had nine desks, so one more desk kit was ordered and the room was filling up!
In the TV series, each of the elements has a color: red, blue, yellow and green. Some tables in her classroom had tops in these colors and she did some trading for colors she didn’t have. Teacher win! I didn’t have student tables and the tops of my desks were all brown. Paint them? I tried a coat of acrylic paint on one with a poor result. I scratched it off and scratched my head. What to do? I ended up using colored vinyl tape. The tape adheres well to a flat surface but is not a permanent solution if you plan to wrap it over the edge because the tape tends to lift on the edges. Every. Five. Minutes.
I bought sticker versions of posters representing each Avatar elemental power. I knew the stickers would be too large and I would not actually use them. I instead printed miniature versions on presentation paper for posters and hanging group signs. I read that printing miniatures on presentation paper using the highest print settings creates the best images. There was a very noticeable difference in color saturation between the ones printed on regular paper and those on presentation paper. Buying the presentation paper was well worth the expense. Because I have an Epson printer, and I bought Epson paper, choosing the right paper setting was easy.
Brenda found some storage chests in a storeroom at school and was planning to designate a drawer in each for groups to store their notebooks. I happened onto this free printie from Miniatures.com and used it to make a set of drawers. The presentation paper is the weight of light cardstock so it might be too thick for some printed minis, but it made sturdy drawers in the storage unit. Since each drawer was a different pattern, I “assigned” a pattern to each group by pasting a pattern next to each element poster on the bulletin board.
I made a framework to hold the drawers out of cross-stich canvas. I thought it would be easy because I could count the squares and the cut lines were built in. That was true enough but gluing it together was a challenge! I used Uhu Max Repair Power and although it does not set quickly, it dried quite sturdy and transparent.
Brenda was planning to use a reward system where each group collected pom pom balls in their color so I made jars for each group color and filled them with painted styrofoam snow from Dollar Tree. I think toy rewards were mentioned. The transformation away from high school teacher was well underway.
Purple is Brenda’s favorite color so I went for it and included that as a the fifth color in the room. It was getting pretty busy in there. In one conversation she mentioned there was a lot going on visually in her room and it was almost too much for her. It seemed we were still on the same page because I was feeling that way too!
I really liked how the whiteboard turned out. It is made from photo paper with a washi tape border and a balsa wood rail. I used a ball stylus to score the grooves in the rail. I had to score it again each time I added a coat of paint because the wood swelled but it resulted in a smooth finish. The hangers for the flip chart are clamp ends for cord jewelry. I found the tiny ruled paper amongst the zillions of little notebooks I have kept for way too long and cut some down to the right dimension. I bound it with blue masking tape and used my tiniest punch to make the holes at the top.
Brenda set up an area by her desk for students to get extra help. The folding table kit I bought without a clear purpose worked perfectly here so I built that. The lesson I am learning is if you find a miniature deal and it completes a set, buy it.
She described flip cards she bought with pictures of happy and confused brains for her students to hold up as a check for understanding. She was going to use the confused brain as a sign for this area. She was on a sixth grade roll now. Thumbs up or thumbs down was as fancy as it got in my high school classes and it was hard to get them to lift their hand high enough to see their thumb! I looked and looked but never found those cards. I did find a confused speech bubble in my scrapbooking supplies and used it to create a sign to name the area “Help Center”. I asked enough leading questions to entice her to text me her Amazon poster order so I was able to replicate the ones she purchased and hang them in the same corner of the room.
I was intrigued to see folks do miniature cooking recently, and while I’m not planning to get into that, I did do a bit of miniature science. One of the first topics the sixth graders will study is density. I was gifted a test tube set would be huge to use for lab work at the 1:12 scale, but was great for a class demonstration. I set up some miniature density columns in which the liquids arrange themselves according to their density. I had doubts it would work well at such a small scale. An important science concept to teach is that scale determines behavior of substances in the physical world. Scale is very important in many ways in science and maybe that is part of the miniature attraction for me. My doubts were warranted. Capillary action of the liquids in the small tubes affected the behavior of the liquids and they did not behave according to their density – but they look cool.
My favorite part of making the room was adding accessories to the teacher desk area. The sticky notes were made from another free Miniature.com printie. After making those I simply used the same method to make the stack of white paper. The sharpie marker is carved from a toothpick with a bit of wire for the clip on the cap. I used my pin vise hand drill to drill a tiny hole in the toothpick to insert the wire. The highlighter began life as a piece of fluorescent weed eater line. The insulated cup is parts of an ink pen with a google eye lid and the insulation from wire for a straw. The pencil is made from wire, glue and paint. The vase is a bead and the arrangement is a mixture of fake flowers, moss and dried grass.
Lastly, I made sure to give Brenda’s chair a little bling. I added chrome trim using chrome nail powder and UV gel topcoat. The upholstery is a swirly blue and purple pattern. Sometimes a cool chair to sit in is just enough to make a gal stay a while. Ask Brenda about it and she will have a story to tell you about her old desk chair.
I hope Brenda has an amazing year in her actual room with her new students learning science. I also hope they enjoy checking out my imaginary version.