Michelle Haas and Quincey Reese
In recent years, teachers at Penn-Trafford have begun to increase advertisement of their classes to students by hanging posters in the hallways. This year especially has brought a wide array of visuals for students to see as they go about their days.
Some of the classes utilizing this idea including chorus, foreign language, statistics, robotics and CADD, as well as a variety of other technology-based courses.
Class posters line the hallways above the locker banks.
Principles of engineering teacher Jeff Newsom made posters to advertise classes for the STEAM and technology education department. Instead of placing his signs around the hallways, however, he hung them in the stairwells to make them more visible to students.
“We placed them where we did, because everybody’s advertising a lot of things throughout the school,” Newsom said. “Most of them are on the sides of the walls, and unless you’re looking at the lockers, you really don’t see them. We decided to put ours on the bulkheads above the renovations and in the stairwells so maybe more students would notice what we have.”
Newsom said the main purpose of his signs was to promote awareness of the technology courses and encourage those who have not already done so to take one of them.
“There are a lot of students in our school that want to go into engineering areas, and a lot of them don’t take our classes. Maybe they don’t know about them or they don’t realize some of them are honors courses now,” Newsom said. “We’re just trying to increase awareness so that way students get hands-on experience for their majors.”
Newsom also said he does not yet know how effective his posters have been in bringing students to his classes. He added he will have to wait until scheduling is over to see if the participation numbers went up.
Newsom emphasized the importance of advertising classes to students, saying few students take time to read through all of the options listed in the Program of Studies.
“I think when students look at the Program of Studies, it’s like anything else. It’s a bunch of text. I remember the same thing from when I was a teenager. Unless there is something very specific you are looking for, you just kind of fan through it and think only about what you need to take,” Newsom said. “I don’t know that students really research what the school has available. Singling some classes out from each department gets students to look more into them.”
A pie chart showing that a majority of surveyed students do believe that hanging posters in the halls is beneficial.
Spanish teacher Desiree Alba and French teacher Cristy Rizzardi handled the creation of the posters for the foreign language department. These signs advertise French, Spanish and German classes for both levels one and two and show the benefits of taking a language course in general.
Alba and Rizzardi both said they chose to advertise the classes in this way because it was time-efficient, creative and other teachers had done it before.
Unlike Newsom, Alba said they chose to hang their posters in the hallways since students are always using them.
“You guys are always in the halls, so we wanted to make sure if you were there and reading something, there was something from us as well,” Alba said.
The success and effectiveness of their methods, however, remain unknown as there is no system in place to determine why students took the classes.
They continued to say they want the signs to make their classes stand out among the numerous other electives and remind students of what they have to offer. Expectations for a level one and two language course as well as the benefits of taking them are also covered in the posters.
Choral teacher Jacqueline Hammill also said that she hopes the chorus posters compel students to take advantage of the classes the school has to offer while they still have the chance. Hammill started hanging up posters three years ago in hopes that students would consider a chorus class regardless of their musical background or prior experience.
“I think the signs and posters create an awareness of the opportunities the choral department has to offer. You only have four years to become involved in these programs,” Hammill said.
Statistics teacher Bronwyn Sodrosky also utilized the hallways by hanging up pun-filled posters for her classes. These posters are a bonus assignment for her classes that she has been offering every for the past four years. The assignment gave her classes an option to get get some bonus points while also bringing awareness to her class. She started hanging posters because she said statistics is not as well-known as other math classes.
“Kids don’t really know about stats. They know about geometry, algebra and calculus because these come in a sequence. Since stats is on its own, people don’t really know about it. If people see a poster it might bring up a conversation,” Sodrosky said.
The effectiveness of hanging up posters around school is unknown. Some teachers said it has helped, but a number of students have said it has not influenced them.
Senior Kaylie Shojaie, for example, said she has seen the posters but not taken them into consideration.
A pie chart showing that a majority of students do not believe the class posters have influenced their decisions in making their schedule.
“I don’t think they have influenced me, and I don’t think they are an effective way of getting students to take a class, but I have noticed the posters. Maybe instead of posters, teachers could go to classes and talk about what their class consists of,” Shojaie said. “I feel like students make their decisions based on what other students say. If someone talked to them about what the class is, they could make a more educated decision.”
Sophomore Sophia Pernick on the other hand said the signs are somewhat effective, but agreed other methods would work better.
“I think the signs are effective to a degree. It depends on how they are shown,” Pernick said. “But I also believe more students would feel better about their decision to take that certain class if they saw a video on the announcements like teachers have done before. Another great way to expose a class to students would be to have previous or current students of the class talk to those who are interested in taking it.”
Some teachers agree if given the chance they would utilize other ways of spreading the word about their class. Posters are simply the most cost and time effective way to get the word out. Hammill in particular said she would love to have her students perform in the foyer in the mornings, but technicalities get in the way of making this a reality.
In the end, seeing the posters sparks some conversation. Seeing statistics puns hanging up next to choral posters listing all the excuses of why people are not taking chorus makes people at least pause for a second when filling out their scheduling sheet. Effectiveness or lack thereof aside, they perform their main job, which is to get the word out.