eraser

or... the children are still learning that things should not be just what they are.

it is not my goal every morning to go into the classroom and "freak out the squares". i was raised funny and it comes out a lot in class.

a large chalkboard stretches across the front wall of my classroom. the half of it nearest the window is covered over by a dryerase board. you know the kind. a shiny white board you can write on with markers. special markers. if you use regular markers the entire world will stop and people will scream, "no!!!!!! that's regular!!!!" there is nothing good about the dryerase board but because i write too much anyway i use it. i need the space. as with the markers, there is a special eraser for this board. well, not really special. but it turns out if you use the same one you've been using on your chalkboard, results will be disastrous, at the very least. because disastrousness in a ninth grade class can only lead to further disastrousness in the form of lamenting children who do not quickly recover, it is necessary to maintain a two-eraser system. this means not only that you must have two separate erasers but also that you must remember which is which and use each accordingly. and because supplies are always in short supply at a public school, it is also important to hide your erasers. because they will, like your markers, walk away when you're not looking. teachers borrow lots of things. pens. pencils. markers. erasers. scissors. staplers. desks. it is a dangerous world out there and a teacher who can't keep track of her erasers is no teacher at all.

now, i managed to keep my erasers through an entire school year but the thrill of my accomplishment made me careless. i did not lock them away over the summer and when we returned there was nary an eraser to be seen. i went to set out my array of twelve beautiful, new dryerase markers (only three visible to the eye of a ninth grader) and my chalk. the chalk was missing as well. i waited a few days, thinking chalk and erasers would turn up. nope. i began making mental notes to purchase new erasers and to forage for chalk (there is always chalk. you just have to know where to look.)

a week or so in, i needed to erase something on the dryerase board and opened a file cabinet to look for a paper towel or napkin or maybe some of the green tissue paper i'd seen somewhere. my hand rested on an old felt puppet one of the speech teachers used with her students. a simple thing, a pink-faced boy. eraser pink. and i erased the board to the gasps and howls of horrified ninth graders. you'd have thought i was erasing the board with an actual child. "what is wrong with you?" howled a child. "what? it's just a puppet."

but children can adapt to anything and these children did. the eraserhead puppet worked better, was more thorough, protected my delicate skin from the dangerous sprinkles of erased marker better than any cruddy standard eraser ever could. and i erased every day with the head of that small child puppet until the children began to express concern about his sorry state. "miss, you need to wash him. he's filthy!" "miss, his face is completely gone. he's disgusting!" and i began to feel guilty about it. this fresh-faced, pinky cheeked boy was now a dingy mingling of all the marker colors i owned, all twelve. i stalled a few days but really i had no intention of washing him. i loved his hideousness. no other teacher would ever take him.

a few days into the concerns/complaints, i opened a drawer in that wonderful filing cabinet again and found two things i had been living without too long. far too long. first, i found the shell-pink head of the eraser boy's sister. clean and fresh and ready for erasing. and when i lifted her gently from her resting place in the drawer, i found under her skirt a box of giant, glowing sidewalk chalk. the fat kind little kids can grip but in colors you're pretty sure will glow if you put them under a blacklight. and i know the children. i know what change does to them, how shock of any kind just knocks them out of their own skins. so i waited until they left, until the bell herded them off to some other room with some other dryerase board, and i chucked eraserhead boy in the garbage. i hung his little sister on the hook at the edge of my dryerase board. and then i got out a stub of chalk. with my fragile little angels in mind i selected white. regular chalk white. and i wrote some things on the board.

although there is some concern over the possible death (the highly suspected death-maybe murder) of eraserhead boy, there is general rejoicing at the newness of eraserhead girl. the children are proud of me. but while i am writing on one board, their eyes shift quietly, soundlessly, to the other board where there's a list of information written in -gasp- white chalk. on a chalkboard. but they are sharp and they know more is happening than that and they scan for the chalk they know i didn't have yesterday. their eyes settle on the fat white stub of chalk sitting so heavy in the chalk tray it might pry the tray off. so pudgy its back side rests against the board itself while its front side looms precariously close to the edge of the tray. and they do not say a word but several of them are writing notes on the insides of their brains. new eraser. new chalk. too much. too too much. and in the interval between classes i am busy with a student and i do not see how it happens but someone writes "this is the coolest chalk ever" in round, neat handwriting in the middle of the chalk board.

it strikes me as odd that they acclimated so quickly to the doomed family of puppets(i know there are more and i will find them) i've begun parading across the dryerase board. especially when the chalk is so clearly overwhelming. but this is not the end. in my classroom there are plenty of things just waiting around for a good idea. mostly there's lots of yarn. in fact, piled on the windowsill under the air conditioner that does not work but does allow a great deal of rain, snow and wind to enter the room and fall on the children is a pile of yarn. four or five or maybe six skeins of white yarn and one small ball of pale pink. it is there mostly because it is close at hand and because children often have emergencies that can be pretty well managed with a little yarn. i have the dryerase board all written up and the chalkboard all written up and i want to erase the chalkboard and write a little bit on it for a group at work sitting right up under it. i tell them to get out paper and be ready and i walk over to the ledge of white yarn. i bring it back, talking to the group as i erase what is written and drop the yarn in the chalk tray. i pick up the sidewalk chalk and begin to write and a voice from the middle of the room calls out, "why are you using yarn as an eraser?" there are a few giggles and several rolling eyes. the suggestion is that yarn is not the strangest eraser she's seen in the room. everyone returns to their work.

at the end of class, a boy from the small group i'd worked with asks if he can erase the chalkboard. i nod. he grabs the yarn and brushes it slowly over the surface of the board. "cool!" he whispers while a few others gathered around him look on.