Never Bored with the Board

Mrs. Shulman actually started designing bulletin boards back in seventh grade. In Bais Yaakov Elementary in Detroit, every girl had the opportunity to design and put up a bulletin board, rotating each month. Leah got the month of Av. She created a bulletin board based on a Yerushalayim theme and was so excited about it. But when she got to school, she saw just how large a bulletin board is (a standard board is 8 feet by 4 feet!) and the material she had prepared just didn’t fill it up. Oops! That’s what she remembers most about that first one —her material just being too small for that ginormous board.

Color War in high school brought more bulletin board design opportunities. But it wasn’t until she came back from seminary that Leah actually got paid to do them. She started her first teaching job and mentioned to the principal that she had experience with bulletin boards. Voila! A bulletin board creator was born.

The board she remembers most from that time was actually the most complicated one she ever helped make. It had six working telephones attached to it. If you picked them up, they spoke about different times in Jewish history. But the batteries died frequently, and it was hard to maintain. Many of the other boards from her “early days” were also interactive, involving riddles or parshah questions kids could answer.

After she moved to Baltimore and got married, Mrs. Shulman started working as an art teacher in the mornings, as well as an afternoon fifth-grade teacher. She mentioned to the school’s administration that she made bulletin boards. Before she knew it, she was decorating the school’s halls and classrooms.