That cluttered blackboard

Helen DeWitt links to this British-style rant (much different from my own story), which reminds me that I never erase the board after my classes either. But the board is usually clean for me. Probably because I usually teach morning classes. Once, though, about 15 years ago, I taught in a classroom right after a biology professor, an elderly lady who used several colors of chalk to construct beautiful pictures on the blackboard every lecture. She was very good about erasing as I was coming in. That semester and the one after that, I remembered to erase the board after class, but I’ve since slipped to the more natural equilibrium.

One more thing. A few years ago I invited Frank Morgan to give a talk at Columbia on how to teach better. One of the little things he discussed was how to use the blackboard. One of his points was that students aren’t always paying attention–and, even if they are, they are often lost in thought trying to make sense of something or another. As a result, they won’t be following every step of yours on the blackboard.

To put it another way: to the lecturer, the blackboard is a space-time process in which things get written down, erased, modified, and so on. To many a student, the blackboard is a series of snapshots of a spatial process. And it helps if each of these snapshots makes sense on its own terms. To that end, Frank recommends that you write a header at the top of each section of the blackboard so that students can keep track of what is going on.

5 thoughts on “That cluttered blackboard

  1. I do erase the board before I leave the classroom, as a courtesy to the next instructor.

    But now that I have an iPhone, I've started taking pictures of the board before I erase them, and I put some of them on the blog that I run for my class. I asked what the students thought of this today, and they were very much for it.

  2. Another tip is to stand slightly away from the board so your sweater doesn't erase what you wrote.

    I loved our main chemistry lecture hall. It had nested boards that rose 1 by 1 so the start of the class would sit way up high and you could outline everything without erasing a thing.

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  4. Maybe it's my archaeology background, but I actually find it interesting when the black/whiteboard hasn't been erased when I come into a classroom — especially if the previous class was a wildly different discipline (I taught a cultural geography class at one point that followed an accounting class). I kind of like the little artefacts of past room occupation.

    That being said, I try to always make sure to erase my own board writings.

  5. It's not so bad if it was some type of humanities class. They might write six words on the board and then have a discussion for twenty minutes (wish I could teach like that).

    What I hate is following a math or physics class. That chalkboard is covered top to bottom, sometimes even with colored chalk that doesn't easily come off.

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