our colorful life: Josh’s new classroom + easy DIY ideas for teachers!

Last month, Josh started his first post-graduate position as a high school math teacher. Luckily, he asked me to help decorate and set it up, so I didn’t have to beg. The room he was issued was in major need of renovations, so together we made it a colorful learning environment without spending a fortune. Enjoy some easy DIY tips for teachers and Josh’s bright classroom.

With a virtually non-existant budget, I set out to create as many free things as possible. Almost all of the posters and signs displayed in his classroom I created with some free font downloads and photoshop.

The first thing we did was clean and paint! Seriously, this room was in desperate need of some TLC, so we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. Josh picked out a bright orange for the walls and blue for the trim. A fresh coat of paint did wonders and the colors really livened up the space.

Thanks to Pinterest, I found all sorts of ideas to make decorating easier. With the exception of one, all of Josh’s bulletin board space is actually very grimey chalkboard. We used super inexpensive plastic table cloths in bright colors to cover the boards and add signs and posters with tape. We ended up using heavy duty, double sided carpet tape to keep everything up, so the table cloths probably won’t be reusable, but they’re so cheap that it won’t hurt to replace them if necessary.

Also, for any teachers out there, I found all of the bulletin board letters at the Dollar store! Super cheap and they actually came in cute, non-cheesy patterns!

We added some fun patterned wrapping paper that we already owned to the back of his built-in bookshelf to spice things up.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the room are these celebrity inspired posters. Josh found quotes from familiar faces and I put them together in Photoshop. It took almost no time but they look so awesome grouped together on this board!

Now for the comparison! We made sure to take lots of before and after pictures to show exactly what we were working with. The end results are so awesome!

Don’t you wish Josh was your math teacher?! It was a lot (A LOT!) of work but it turned out so great that I’m glad to help. We actually spent the majority of our two year wedding anniversary working on his room to make sure it was completed before school started but it was totally worth it!