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September 14, 2007
Frozen in time
Students in Portland, Oregon, found an interesting thing on a chalkboard: a lesson written way back in 1968:
Some Portland students received a blast from the past after finding a hidden treasure in their classroom.
A third-grade teacher at Hollyrood-Fernwood School in northeast Portland wanted to get rid of two old chalkboards in her classroom, but she never dreamed she would find a time capsule behind them.
The teacher discovered another chalkboard with a lesson about the Apollo 10 space mission, written by a teacher in 1969, 38 years ago.
The board read, “Apollo 10 is on the way to the moon. It has three astronauts aboard . . . They will look closely at the moon . . . They will splash down on Sunday.”
This is pretty interesting and all, but it makes me wonder: what kind of teacher lets her blackboard sit unwashed for nearly four decades? It's unheard of! Many teachers I have known are anal-retentive to the highest degree. Others were not as stringent. But all of them could pretty much agree that their damn blackboards were clean at the end of the day.
My math teacher in high school was fanatical. He was the only teacher I knew who actually cleaned his board with soap and water. Being a math teacher, he did it in perfectly straight lines. He would start on the left, deliberately drag his sponge down the board, and then move a few inches to the right and do it all over again. When he was done, the boards were covered with a layer of water, but they were clean as could be. It took them a good ten minutes to dry. I had another teacher who favored windex, and another who used the old-fashioned eraser. In my estimation, nothing was quite so tacky as a blackboard with chalk smudges all over it.
Do any of you, dear readers, have any good stories about teachers and their blackboards? Did anyone ever have to write a sentence 100 times, a la Bart Simpson? I'm interested to hear your responses!
entry no. 963
Posted by oz115 at September 14, 2007 12:24 PM