Dry-Erase Painted Walls Can Enhance the Quality of Every Room in Your School
Premium ReMARKable dry erase paint is commonly used to transform the drab unused walls of elementary, high school, and college classrooms into an attractive, highly functional writing surfaces for teachers and students to use for lessons and other activities. However, other rooms and areas of a school are often overlooked when it comes to applying quality dry-erase paint; in fact, the paint can easily be used to convert an entire school building into an enhanced educational and communications environment. For example, the principal’s office, the teachers’ lounge, the school cafeteria, the nurse’s office, the music classroom, the art room, the computer room, the library, the gym, and students’ and teachers’ lockers can all become places where top-quality dry erase paint is installed. In this way, virtually every part of a school building can become a place that promotes better learning, interaction, and creativity among administrators, teachers, students, staff, and security personnel alike.
The Principal’s Office
In the principal’s office, a dry-erase wall can serve as a handy place to post teachers’ schedules, academic goals for a semester or year, new curriculum ideas, times for student counseling sessions and parent meetings, ideas for managing the school budget, lists of school supplies to be ordered, maintenance workers’ schedules, and much more. Since principals are responsible for ensuring school security for students, teachers, staff, and visitors, the wall may also be used to brainstorm improvements in security procedures and personnel assignments, as well as an endless number of other activities related to school administration.
When principals meet with parents and teachers to discuss students’ behavior and academic progress, a dry erase wall can serve as an easy-to-use canvas for sharing ideas on helping students improve in these areas. In addition, the wall can be used to list current concerns of parents and community members about school academic policies, athletic teams, extracurricular activities, and the like. When conducting professional development programs and workshops for faculty and staff, the wall can be a place to record ideas for scheduling, creative development of teachers, and new classroom activities.
The Faculty Lounge or Break Room
Teachers typically spend a lot of time prepping bulletin boards in their classrooms, so why not give some TLC to the board in their break room? The area where faculty members take breaks and have lunch is ideal for having a dry-erase painted wall act as a bulletin board and general communications hub. There, teachers can leave notes and reminders for one another, plan lessons together, brainstorm ideas for teachers’ meetings, list break room items to be ordered, post motivational quotes, and more. The door to the faculty lounge can even become a dry erase painted surface for writing items like “the quote of the day,” faculty meeting times, and reminders about upcoming school events.
The School Cafeteria
The cafeteria is an ideal place to have a dry erase wall for listing items such as the daily and/or weekly menu, rules on proper lunchroom etiquette, and state health department guidelines. The vast surface area of a dry erase wall makes it easy to write in large letters to better convey to students the importance of following the rules, and also to allow many lunch menu items and other information to be listed at once in large letters for all to see. In addition, students can write down suggestions for new menu items, reviews of meals, and related ideas.
The School Nurse’s Office
The nurse’s office is an area where the focus is on both the physical well-being of the students and staff and the children’s overall success and life-long achievement. There, a dry erase painted wall can serve as a large space for posting school health guidelines, medical supplies to be ordered, students’ immunization status, referrals for health conditions, and other health-related items, as well as ideas on health and safety awareness, wellness training, healthy eating habits, and more.
The Art Room
Whether it’s used to make doodles and artwork, write inspiring messages to spark creativity, or make preliminary sketches for class art projects, a dry-erase painted wall is an exciting way to perk up a school art room. When students make rough sketches before crafting a finished painting, drawing, or sculpture, they typically waste a lot of paper, causing increased expense for the school and harm to the environment. However, if these sketches are done on a dry erase wall, they can be generated quickly with low-odor markers and then easily erased with a microfiber cloth until an acceptable final sketch is created. Using a marker to draw on the vast canvas of a dry erase wall unleashes spontaneous images more easily than drawing with a pencil on a small piece of paper. When students sketch on a dry erase wall, they feel freer to express their artistic ideas and come up with images that can later be used to fashion finished works of art for class assignments.
The Music Classroom
The music classroom is another ideal place for a dry erase painted wall, as it offers an immense area for creating multiple music staves in less than 15 minutes through the use of a ruler and some 1/8-inch pinstriping available at auto parts stores. Even if a school already has standard five-line music staves in its music room, music teachers might like having a three-line staff for use with first and second graders or staves in different areas of the room that work better for teaching purposes. Music teachers will be amazed at how easy it is to produce the staves with the pinstriping material, and having one or more permanent music staves in the music room will make their lives much easier.
In this way, a dry-erase coated wall offers a space-saving, highly functional addition to a school’s music classroom. The high-quality dry-erase paint produces a tough, attractive writing and drawing surface that resists scratching, staining, and ghosting. And when permanent lines are made on the wall, it saves teachers the hassle of redrawing staff lines each time they erase notes during music lessons.
The Computer Room
Installing dry erase paint on the walls of the school computer room creates a vast area for teachers to write down lesson information when conducting classes, posting rules such as “no food and drink allowed” and “save your data often,” as well as times for using the computer room, and other useful information. In addition, advice on how to use computers, such as which keys to use for PC computer shortcuts, can be written down in large letters on the wall for younger and less tech-savvy students to easily see and study. Another area of the dry-erase wall may be designated for students to write suggestions about improving the computer room, notes to teachers, and the like.
The School Library
Library class time and other time spent in the school library are some of the most important periods of the day in a school’s curriculum, but they often get sidelined and become a secondary priority to course completion and other activities. Installing a dry-erase painted wall in the school library can help to alleviate this problem by helping teachers make library time more exciting for students through class activities involving library use. For example, after a class has read a book, they can create a large “story pyramid” on the dry erase wall using the following structure:
Line 1: One word that gives the main character’s name
Line 2: Two words that describe the main character
Line 3: Three words that describe the story’s setting
Line 4: Four words that state the story’s main problem
Line 5: Five words that describe one main event in the story
Line 6: Six words that describe a second main event
Line 7: Seven words that describe a third event
Line 8: Eight words that provide the solution to the problem.
In this way, the library’s dry erase wall becomes a useful tool for enhancing children’s reading proficiency and interest in reading that can last a lifetime and enhance both their academic and personal growth.