Back to School: My five favorite classroom postcards
Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this.
Schools in Texas generally begin the fall semester in mid-August. However, teachers go back a week and a half to two weeks beforehand for a ‘magical’ period of time called in-service. During this time, schools provide teachers some of their mandatory professional development hours, as well as deliver information about data, mission statements for the year, and other legal requirements such as safety meetings. My current school is generally pretty good about giving us time to work in our classrooms, but I’ve been in schools where there is barely an hour of ‘room time’.
And hopefully, your district doesn’t do convocation, because then you lose one of your precious mornings to sit in a church or district auditorium while the district level leadership throws a pep rally for social media with teachers as the props. Sometimes it’s a nice way to catch up with teachers at other schools, at least.
The best part of in-service, however, is putting our rooms back together. I hang up my massive map tapestries (I’ve been eying one like this for a while, but it's just so expensive). I have all of these cool laminated park guides that I’ve picked up from my travels. But my favorite little corner is my wall of postcards.
My wall of postcards occupies the space behind my desk. Some years it is a corkboard, sometimes it’s magnetized, but it is always a tapestry of postcards from places I’ve been and that I’ve received from friends (and occasionally students) who are traveling. When I am feeling down, I will often dim my classroom down to just my mood lights, turn on some vaporwave music, and just take them in.
As I was putting them up, I decided to document my five favorites, presented in no particular order:
The McDonald Observatory (Davis Mountains, Texas)
Out in the farthest reaches of West Texas, the big city lights dwindle down to almost nothing. Low population densities, isolation, and strict regulation around light pollution has made the Trans-Pecos region of Texas one of the darkest places in the United States.
I went to the McDonald Observatory with my best friend about two years ago during a December trip to Davis Mountains. We drove up the summit one extremely chilly afternoon and explored the beautiful museum. The University of Austin, which runs the McDonald Observatory, partnered with local communities to establish the Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve. And the communities from Fort Davis, all the way south to Terlingua and even into Northern Mexico participate to protect this piece of land.
After touring the museum, I purchased a picture of a nebula taken at the observatory for my wife, and this extra long postcard. A simple, but excellent encapsulation of the region. Using an unorthodox size, it manages to capture the vast emptiness of the region. Yet, you can also see the town of Fort Davis nestled into the bosom of the mountains, and the sheer amount of vegetation in the desert. It takes me right back to the Chihuahuan desert.
As we left the museum, it began to snow. Ironic that the first time I’d seen snowfall in years was during my trip to the desert.
It was cool though. I’ll have to talk about those excursions to Fort Davis sometimes.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
An official National Park Service postcard I purchased at the visitor center during my 2020 trip to New Mexico. What I really enjoy about this particular postcard is the lighting. The darkness at the borders of the picture convey the sheer pitch black of the cave system, yet the warm lighting makes the darkness comforting. The adult and their child looking with their neck craned up also reveals the scale. It inspires awe and wonder for me, how I felt exploring the caves in person.
I’m also a huge fan of the vintage Works Progress Administration (WPA) art style. They use simplified designs, bright colors, and bold, declarative fonts. I purchased a few others, but this one is my favorite of the Carlsbad post cards. If you want to read more about that trip, you can do so here.
Big Bend National Park
Another official National Park Service postcard purchased at the visitor center. This postcard right here is actually the first postcard I ever purchased, and began my love of collecting them. This is from my original trip to Big Bend back in 2017. I purchased myself this postcard, then cards for my mother, all the members of my teacher team, and my best friend. (Sadly, I had not yet developed this love of souvenir collecting when I was living abroad).
It has that WPA style that I love, but what I really adore about this postcard is the scale. Casa Grande Peak looms over the cottages, while the foreground shows a desert road winding up the mountain. Meanwhile, silhouettes of the iconic century plant (aka the Agave americana) reach skyward, ready for the only bloom it will do in its life.
I have not been lucky enough to catch a century plant in bloom, which happens during the summer. I went for Spring Break earlier this year, and was lucky enough to see not only Spring rains, but ocotillo in bloom.
Anyway, I associate this postcard with my first real hike, my first true park adventure, and the event that started a now decade long love of the outdoors. If you want to read more about my first trip to Big Bend, you may do so here.
Royal Gorge Bridge and Park (Cañon City, Colorado)
I’m only just noticing how many of these are in the desert.
My wife and I went to Colorado to mark our fifth wedding anniversary. It was our longest trip, and we learned what the limits of our trip energy were. We spent five days in Denver, and three in Colorado Springs. My wife is not an outdoorsy person like I am, but I wanted to share with her the majesty of the desert and mountains as my pictures cannot do it justice. This manifested in a few van and train tours, including a train ride through Royal Gorge near Cañon City, Colorado.
The next day, we drove out from Colorado Springs back to Cañon City again to see the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park. We spent a great day in the park, but sadly didn’t get to zipline as the wind was too strong and didn’t re-open until after we had left. We had just narrowly managed to cross in the gondolas before they shut down those rides as well.
What I really like about this postcard is that, while it is a relatively simple photograph, the choice of a vertical orientation accentuates how deep Royal Gorge truly is. Looking down from the gondola window to the river below genuinely made my stomach flip (in a good way). This was also where I saw bighorn sheep at the closest I had ever seen them.
The reason why this postcard is one of my favorites is it combines my two biggest loves: desert mountains and my wife. Helps me get through a rough day.
White Sands National Park
Of all of my souvenirs on this list, this is the only one showing the night sky. This one technically isn’t a postcard - rather, it’s an informational handout I picked up for free at the visitor’s center and laminated to become a piece of classroom decor. This was one of several pieces of White Sands memorabilia I purchased. It, alongside several pieces of now defunct National Monument postcards and how to avoid dying in the desert in eight different languages, hangs on my wall. It just makes me happy to remember dark skies exist (which I don’t get to see here in Houston).
Nothing more nuanced than that for this one. I just think it’s neat. If you want to read more about my trip to White Sands, you may do so here.
Final Thoughts
This is the last weekend of summer. Honestly, I’m not ready, but I don’t think you ever can be ready. But, it helps to do some positive thinking. Is having a wall of postcards behind my desk functional?
Reminding myself I have an identity beyond being a teacher is certainly an important function.
Thanks for reading, if you made it this far~