When I first started at the middle school, I noticed that some students had their lockers decorated by friends for their birthdays and many others did not. Students would sometimes 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 has 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 download an excel spreadsheet from our school information system of students’ names and birthdays. I then merge this information into my poster and then hang on each student’s locker. I have about 350 students on my caseload, and this is a very easy and manageable “job.” Typically it 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. Really, the hardest part is making a unique poster for each month.
Here are a few of the posters I made for this year:
