Guest Blog Post By Sam Bradford During my student teaching, I tried to observe as many different teachers as possible. All grade levels, all subjects--my goal was to find the teachers whose classes the students put a little extra pep in their step to get to. Then, with my own eyes and ears, I tried to figure out what made those classes successful.  I’ll never forget the way one teacher used a quote wall, and how it single-handedly built community, created an engaging atmosphere, and solidified important concepts. I’ve spent the last thirteen years experimenting with the concept, and I’d like to share my findings with you.  As with any powerful educational tool, the concept is simple and the technology is simpler. All you need is a whiteboard, a marker, and human beings.  Here’s the idea: the teacher sets aside a portion of wall space for interesting quotes that students say in class over the course of the year. You get to determine what “interesting” means. When the moment happens, you allow the student to write the quote on the board and sign their name. As the year progresses, the space slowly fills with quotes.  It seems like such a trifling concept, doesn’t it? I think it’s often the trifling concepts that make the difference between classes students tolerate versus classes that allow students to thrive. Let’s examine a sample of what’s at play with such a concept.  First of all, not to get too Paulo Freire on you, but it democratizes the classroom by giving students a voice. It’s not the teacher’s words that go on the wall; it’s theirs. Their words have the power to adorn the classroom. Think about buildings with other people’s quotes on the walls. They are often important places, right? Places of worship, courthouses, state capitals. Shouldn’t classrooms be as important as those other spaces? And what if your words were that worthy to be immortalized in an important place?  Furthermore, it encourages students to be clever. They now have an incentive to soun