Throughout most of my life, I had some association with chalk, chalkboards (blackboards or greenboards) and chalkboard erasers. All the way through grade school, high school, college and 37 years of teaching, they were part of my life. Now, traditional chalkboards are sort of a dying breed in the age of interactive whiteboards and dry-erase whiteboards in the classroom, but they still exist, and as long as they do, felt chalkboard erasers will still accumulate a ton of chalk dust.
Remember chalkboard erasers? A chalkboard eraser is a supplement and tool used with chalkboards. A common chalkboard eraser is about 2 inches by 4 inches and is composed of felt strips that are held together with sticky paper or glue. It is used to wipe the old chalk markings off the chalkboards.
They basically make chalkboards reusable, and the erasers are reusable themselves. They often have a long life because it is easy to remove the dust from them by clapping them together or striking them against a hard surface.
We were sitting around with some friends and some other guests at a B & B a few weeks ago, and the topic of chalkboard erasers came up. I remembered that sometimes the nuns at St. Anthony’s would use “clapping the erasers” as a soft punishment for classroom indiscretions. Some of the people remembered it being a “reward.” Kids could get out of class to go out and pound the erasers together to release the clouds of dust.
Clapping the erasers was great fun. The nuns would send us out with a collection of all the day’s chalkdust-filled felt erasers. Who knows how many words and numbers were released into the air when we clapped them at arm’s length above our heads or banged them against the stone walls of the old school. When the job was done—no more dust would be released when you pounded them against the wall or a friend’s back or rear end—we’d be covered in the fine white powder, and if we the clappers were creative enough, there’d be hieroglyphics on the wall that would last until the next rain.
At St. Anthony’s, we seldom got to use colored chalk in school, but when we did, the eraser artwork and our clothes and hair would take on a different palette. In my own teaching career, I never sent kids out to clap erasers; that was a job done by the janitors every evening. I wonder if they had as much fun as we did when we were kids. They probably used a vacuum cleaner!
Today, many classrooms are equipped with whiteboards (also known by the terms markerboard, dry-erase board, dry-wipe board, etc.). These are glossy, usually white, surfaces for nonpermanent markings. The popularity of whiteboards increased rapidly in the mid-1990s, about the time I retired, and they have become a fixture in many offices, meeting rooms, school classrooms and other work environments.
Interactive whiteboards are large display boards that connect to a computer. A projector projects the computer’s desktop onto the board’s surface; users control the computer using a pen, finger, stylus or other device. The board is typically mounted to a wall or floor stand.
Technology is taking over. In another generation, teachers and kids will never know about the old-fashioned blackboards and the fun of being sent outside to clap erasers at the end of the school day. Ah, progress!
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