Speakout Columns
Oh, that dastardly chalk
Feb 1, 2007 12:07 PM
Chalk it seems, if not used correctly, can prevent children from learning. Who ever would have thought such a thing? I have always known that chalk dust can be annoying: gathering, as it so often does, on the rail at the bottom of the blackboard and then on your hands and on your clothes. Yes, it definitely can be annoying. But never in my wildest dreams had I really considered it as something that was interfering with the education of our students. Silly me.
These last few years there has been an undertaking by the city bigwigs in the Department of Education to try to find out why our children are not achieving the levels and standards expected of them. Obvious variables like language barriers, poverty, family problems, immigration issues, classroom overcrowding, lack of materials and facilities, etc., were pushed to the side. Instead in this quest for the truth, great efforts were made to look closely inside the very classrooms where these children were supposedly being taught. The problem, it seemed, had to lie there. Remove this problem and the learning process would finally begin to happen. Now, three or four years into this search, for the sake of our students and their parents who entrust this city with the education of their children, we must look at what it is they found and how those problems were to be addressed.
The first to be addressed was classroom chalk. Chalk had to be replaced with big bright colorful Crayola markers. However, not only was it the discovery of the harmful effects of classroom chalk that caught so many of us teachers off guard, it was also the potential dangers that were inherent in the blackboard. Chalk and the blackboard: Two staples of the American classroom for god only knows how long were now relegated to the “harmful” category. The blackboard, as such, was all but replaced with giant white post-its. We call this “chart paper,” but it is, in fact, just giant white replicas of the little yellow post-it notepads. There would no longer be “chalk and talk” in any of the rooms. Instead it would be “Crayola markers and talk.”
But the city bigwigs were not done yet. No, no, no. Next it was the front of the room. I thought this might have something to do with the fact that the children had been looking at the dangerous blackboard that had writing on it done in that dreaded chalk. But no, it wasn’t that at all. It seems that it’s bad for a nurturing learning environment if students are all seated facing the front of the room, even if it’s the giant white post-its that are being used with the big bright colored markers. It seemed that the front of the room in and of itself was what was harmful if looked at for too long a period. Like looking into a bright light, I guess.
The way around this problem was to movethe desks turned away from the front of the room and set up facing one another. This helped the students so that they would no longer have to twist their necks when they need to turn to gossip with their fellow students. It seems, along with the chalk and the blackboard and the front of the room, this twisting and turning of the necks to talk to one another was causing a great deal of concern, too. Now the students could simply face their fellows all day long, often sitting in groups of five or six at a time. Almost none of them would then be facing the front of the room — where, I might add, the teacher would not be anyway.
Because this part of the room was now to be considered a hazardous area, teachers were instructed not to stay there too long. Instead they should walk around the room, hopefully not distracting the students who should be focused on one another rather than on the teacher. The teacher would now have to keep walking in and out between the desks, never standing in one place lest the children get too comfortable looking at him or her. The superintendent of my district, Diane Kay, actually told the staff in my building during one of those professional development fiascos that the teachers should, in fact, try to stay in the background.
I guess that means we are the next problem that will need to be removed, along with the chalk and the blackboard and the front of the room. I only hope someone informs all those private schools and the top universities in our land of the dangers they are messing with by not following New York City’s lead. It’s a wonder anyone learns a thing in those places, what with all the blackboards and treacherous chalk.
Dermot Smyth teaches social studies and is the chapter leader at IS 5 in Queens.
