When I first started at the middle school, I noticed that some students had their lockers decorated by friends for their birthdays while many others did not. Sometimes, students would come to me saying they were disappointed that their friends didn’t decorate their locker for their birthday.
I wanted to make sure that all students were recognized in this very small way, so I decided to decorate lockers for every student. On the first of every month, I hang a poster on every student’s locker who is celebrating a birthday during that month. Since doing so, elaborate locker decorations by students for their friends have stopped. Students still celebrate each other’s birthdays, but not in a show-off fashion that decorating the lockers had done.
Each month, the poster I hang is different, but it is the same for all students during that month. I downloaded an excel spreadsheet of students’ names and birthdays from our school information system. I then merge this information into my poster and hang it on each student’s locker. I have about 350 students on my caseload, and this is a straightforward and manageable “job.” It typically takes me about 20 minutes to hang the signs each month, so it really isn’t a lot of extra time to do something special for my students. The hardest part of the process is making a unique poster for each month.
If you would like a copy of your own to use at school, go to my TpT Store here.
