![]() ![]() The yellow chalk was also supposed to be easier to read on a green board than white chalk on a blackboard. Like any of us had even considered that possibility. We were told that the yellow chalk wouldn’t irritate asthmatics’ lungs. Ballreich’s Lindbergh class, I was introduced to green blackboards and yellow “dustless” chalk. The following year, as a fifth-grader in Mrs. For a brief instant, before the boards were dry, they’d gleam like the shiny goo of a La Brea Tar Pit. Sometimes, we’d be allowed to go into one of the two restrooms at the rear of the classroom and run water into a towel to wipe the blackboards clean. Despite our best efforts, large white smudges remained on the boards. ![]() We’d cough and wheeze as clouds of chalk dust engulfed us. It also sent puffs of dust into the atmosphere and produced a screeching noise against slate that could startle and disquiet even the most indolent learner.Īt the end of the day, she’d allow one of us to erase the boards - badly, I might add. ![]() The chalk would frequently break in her fingers. When she ran out of space, she’d go to another chalkboard that stretched along the classroom’s side wall. Coxen’s arthritic fingers - to a fourth-grader she seemed about 75, but was probably only in her early 50s - would fly over the 15-foot-wide blackboard at the front of the classroom. Coxen would write on the blackboard with sticks of pure white chalk - whiter than the famous cliffs of Dover. But as far as I know, no one ever complained to OSHA. It had termites and a serious mold problem. Looking back 60 years, I’d be willing to bet that the foul odor emanated from the structure itself. All eyes remained fixated on the answer sheets on our desks. Our teacher would quite literally call us out for injudicious emissions of flatulence during quizzes. Whatshisname, would bellow at the top of her lungs for the entire class to hear: “Johnny has either done it again or it’s raining.” Coxen!” Sally, sitting a couple of seats behind Mr. It would puddle beneath his desk, and our heads would automatically rotate toward the ceiling to see if we could detect a drip-drip-drip. Little Johnny Whatshisname, a couple of rows from me, would occasionally wet his pants while doing math. In fact, we sometimes assumed it was raining when it wasn’t. We had ancient slate blackboards in the drafty old bungalow, and it leaked every time it rained. Frankly, they looked like structures Grant might have occupied at Spotsylvania. The class met in one of two Lindbergh “bungalows,” leftovers from the Santa Ana Army Airbase. In my fourth-grade classroom we were shackled with obsolete technology. What could I be referring to? Yellow chalk.Īnd, oh yeah, a special “greenboard” to go along with it instead of the traditional - and hopelessly archaic - blackboard. It was the equivalent of today’s laptop, iPad, SMART Board and ELMO Document Camera all rolled into one. NMUSD introduced that year a revolutionary new concept in classroom instruction. The year was 1954, and I was a fifth-grader at Lindbergh School in Costa Mesa. I was a student when the Newport-Mesa Unified School District unveiled what was considered at the time the grandest advance in classroom technology in decades. ![]()
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