Deep into the L400 hallway, in the corner of an unassuming classroom, stands a pink sheet of paper filled with a history that spans over 20 years. The classroom belongs to math teacher Mr. Sean Welsh, and the history is the many daydreams from students who have been caught daydreaming during his class. Mr. Welsh’s “Daydreaming Wall of Fame” is an amalgamation of the ridiculous thoughts bored math scholars have been caught daydreaming about during instruction time.
The idea for the wall began when Welsh was only a 2nd year geometry teacher at Loudoun Valley High School in 2003. He caught a girl daydreaming in class one Wednesday afternoon, and when he confronted her about it, she told him she was thinking about the burritos her friend’s mom made the previous Friday. Welsh was perplexed by how random his student’s daydream was. “I asked a couple more students, and it just kind of dawned on me that they were never daydreaming about anything that was pertaining to anything. It was always just really funny things,” Welsh noted. After that, the Daydreaming Wall of Fame was born.
Since the early days of the tradition, the wall has gone through many sheets of paper and a few classroom changes. Yet, the same whimsy that inspired Welsh to make the wall has not left. Woodgrove class of 2023 alum Nicole Burroughs was featured on the wall in 2021, and her quote reads, “Scheduling a haircut.” Her younger sister, junior Danielle Burroughs, now sees its influence in her AP Calculus BC class. “I think it makes the environment more fun and welcoming. It connects the students in the way that it’s funny to see your friends up there and people you know,” Burroughs shared.
One of Welsh’s goals as a teacher has been to make his math classes more engaging for students. The daydreaming wall is one way he achieves this. “We just call it ‘fun with a little math in the middle,’” Welsh remarked.
Over the last 20 years, the Daydreaming Wall of Fame has created connections across math classes and graduating years, and Welsh enjoys keeping it a part of his classroom tradition. As Welsh put it, “I can snap you back into reality, and we can have some fun doing it.”