On October 10th, 2025, San Rafael High School’s Wind Ensemble visited six nearby elementary schools. The all ages group taught the younger students about the magic of music, getting oohs and ahhs and stares at the sizes of their tubas. But they weren’t the only ones looking around in wonder. The high schoolers were ogling, too, at the mini jungle gyms and colorful paintings of tigers and elephants. 

Each year, the high school students take their lunch break at Coleman Elementary and a good portion of the band goes running to tackle monkey bars or get in line for a game on the blacktop. Ella Clark, a junior, has played the flute at SR since her Freshman year. “We all just go running to the four square, and the hopscotch,” she says. “And like, it’s awesome.” Ella adds that she would be delighted if SR had the same infrastructure.

At the end of the day, I have to trudge through the land of solid grey cement that is my home campus to return my trombone to its cubby. It makes me miss Coleman. 

It makes sense that an elementary and a high school would look different, since they cater to different student needs. But the distance shouldn’t be so vast- not when they’re both still catering to children. Sure, you call some of them teens or tweens, but their brains won’t be fully developed until their mid to late twenties. Let kids be kids.

My main problem is that both schools had an opportunity- the district’s money. San Rafael City School’s Bond Program has been tracking their progress, and the latest update videos are pretty different. Coleman got new climbing structures, plants, and a painted blacktop that accentuated the campus look. SR got more plain white buildings that make its off-white, old school buildings look dirty and outmoded. A long built charm was covered up with the landlord special (an internet nickname for when landlords cover a property’s issues or charms with the simplest and fastest fix. It’s usually said in reference to a plain white paint job).

The sleek, modernistic style makes a school look like a hotel, but students aren’t meant to check in one day and check out the next. Attending high school includes working through what can feel like the biggest four years of a young person’s life. Spending the majority of the week working towards graduating and being released into the adult world shouldn’t happen in a depressing box, it should occur in an enlivened space. A space that shows that other people in the exact same situation have existed, survived, even had fun while they’d done it. 

Teachers decorate their rooms for a reason. Now we just have to spread that idea to the rest of the campus. 

Mr. Baker has worked at SR for 20 years, noticing how students react to the different kinds of classrooms he’s taught in. “I think decorating your room is one of the ways to say ‘I care about you and I care about the school,’” he says. “And students feel at home when it looks like somebody’s actually taking time to show that they care.” 

He also found that students reacted more positively on the first day of school when walking into his newest room, which has a wide array of windows showing off the school’s largest tree. Just another reminder that settings matter, and more nature could be a way to brighten a campus. 

I talked to Ms. Hager, too, who has been at SR for just as long. She brought up the need to make a room feel homey, but said that she does it for herself, too. Teachers have to spend the whole day in their classrooms, some often staying even after school has finished to help students or continue working. So much time in one place makes Ms. Hager want to surround herself with things that make her comfortable enough that she doesn’t feel stuck.

A school isn’t just about education, either. It’s an epicenter of community. There are sports, performances, parties, and all the fundraising events that go into making them happen. Students and their families are on a campus all the time for things centered around building connections and support. When little siblings run around, they shouldn’t feel scared of big, looming squares. Exploring is no fun when everything looks the same. 

Thankfully, SR already has a solution within grasp. The campus still needs to work on architecture and nature, but we do have an easy way to get color. 

Each year, students in AP Art are placed in groups of two or three and tasked with painting either an art room stool or a classroom door. The project is overseen by the art teacher Ms. Yi, but students get  relatively free reign in choosing how to leave their mark on the school. Their work now covers many doors in the Art Quad and the old science building. 

Savannah Rogers painted the tiger that adorns Ms. Yi’s door before graduating from SR in 2025.

“I feel like it’s definitely better to have something colorful and unique other than just, like, some dark gray room that’s not super humanistic,” she says. Currently majoring in photography and minoring in art therapy, the artist had a lot to say on the subject. “There are studies that show when rooms are certain colors, it changes a person’s emotions or expectations. There’s important talk about the art on the walls in hospitals or the impact of the color green.”

The studies that Savannah describes are commonly found under the header of color psychology- and schools around the world are interested in it. A university in Italy tracked student behavior within six residence halls that were completely identical- except for the color of their interiors. Another school, this time in Thailand, tested a selection of its eighth graders for The Effects of Wall Color on Student’s Attention Levels. 

So maybe a high school campus doesn’t get a gaga ball pit or a climbing wall, but they deserve something to help brighten the setting. Decorate classrooms and hallways, paint doors and big walls, maybe even paint a hopscotch for the little kids that visit and the ones that are little kids at heart.