I announced to my team that I'm not very good with bulletin boards because they are "a foreign concept". I've been away from New Zealand for more than ten years so I wondered if it was still true.
I googled "Bulletin board New Zealand" and found pictures that were from American schools.
We don't do bulletin boards in New Zealand. Why not?
Our walls are for the children's work.
When asked if I was going to "do your bulletin board" (the one outside my classroom) my reply was, "I thought I'd just leave up what's there." What there was a piece of art done by a group of children at the end of the school year, mostly to use up the old paints.
One of the new children asked about the piece of art during his school visit. "What's that?"
I replied, "It's a painting. Some children did it with brushes and combs." It's true, they had used combs on the paint.
He added, "And their hands." He was right. There were a couple of hand prints around the outside of the art work. "And their face," he added.
"Yep," I agreed. "They might have got paint on their face."
It was a bulletin board created by children. It showed that we value art process.
It wasn't made by the teacher. It was made by the children.
And it provided an interesting interaction - a valuable outcome of a bulletin board.
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