Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jajdude]

Lately I've had to teach in rooms with the old blackboard and chalk. YUCK. I'm coughing and spitting out dust and washing my hands between classes. Love the whiteboard and marker - hate the chalk! Why would anyone use chalk instead of a whiteboard and marker? Cheaper? This will be a factor in future job choices for me.

[The King of Kwangju]

I love the chalk - it's so "old school."

Plus, it leaves a residue on your trousers, so everybody knows you been teachin'.

[Crazy Oz]

Man I want your job! Chalk, chalk, glorious chalk! How did you manage to find a place with chalk and a blackboard?
Whiteboard markers just don't have the aerodynamics of a used bit of chalk, and the chalk dust can evoke hours of humourous playsessions with the students.
You are truly blessed to be in a place with chalk, use it to its advantage.




Still crazy, still here.

[mokpochica]

You can get dust free chalk from home (do they have it here?) and it is somewhat better. Or chalk holders for your chalk. The problem with the dust free chalk is that it leaves a residue on the board though.

[Zyzyfer]

Chalkboard in every classroom here, along with creaky old wooden floors and lack of heating/AC in almost all of the classrooms. It's great. I feel like I work, or something.

The markers have too many fumes.

[thinker]

before we switched to a new school the chalkdust was piling up in all the classrooms as the korean teachers wouldn't cleanup at all, i mean they were their classrooms after all, we had none at the time and no time to do it, so the boards had layers of previous lessons for the kids to mull over as we wrote the new ones> > >

love white boards, although the projection screens, above the chalkboards, did make a terriblely loud -attention getting- noise absent from their plastic counterparts.

[Blue Flower]

[eamo]

My hagwan uses white ink markers on green boards. Works well but the erasers are filthy and if you spill a drop of the ink, when re-filling the marker, on your clothes-that's it! It's horrible stuff that must be a relation of bleach.

[weatherman]

I love chalk. But I go out of my way to find the soft type. The hard dry stuff is like writing with a stone and slate. I really don't care for the white boards that much, though I know they have some advantages. But the old boards do too, such as felling like you have created some piece of art up there on the board and you would hate to erase it. Old boards make you feel like you are earning your keep too.

[waterbaby]

[Seatangle]

As for me, I can't write as well with chalk as with a whiteboard marker, and my handwriting is bad to begin with, so I need every advantage available. I teach one course at a college in my city, and I can't stand the chalk residue. My hands feel weird the rest of the day, even after I wash them. Of course, maybe I'm just getting OCD about the whole thing. Who knows?

Here's one idea...even though my hogwan has whiteboards, the desks are such that some students can't see them very well. I got a small, portable whiteboard that I can sit at a table and use. It's easier on their eyes, and it puts me in closer proximity to the students. Something as simple as that can make a big difference in getting/keeping a student's attention.

That's my two bits anyway.

Brian

[katydid]

LOL We supposedly have dustless chalk here, but every time I erase the board, it looks like it's snowing! I feel very old school using the chalk, too, and am just waiting for the day when without thinking, I lean up against the board in my black jacket. You remember school...there was always that one teacher who had white splotches on his or her clothing...I suppose it's an occupational hazard.

Also, I once dropped my entire box of chalk on the floor, and now I just have these little nubs to work with. They're still usable, otherwise I'd get another box, but you'd have to try real hard to break a marker.

The one bad bad bad thing about chalk though is at the end of the day, my hands feel so dry. I've been going through lotion like crazy since I had to use a chalkboard.

[crazylemongirl]

But I love blackboards because I can run my fingers along it to get that horrible sound. It annoys the kids so much that they will do anything (even be queit) to avoid it.

I got around the dryness problem by wrapping a small piece of paper around the chalk.

CLG

[crazylemongirl]

I've had this handle for years... didn't realise there was also a lemon at Dave's.

CLG

[Canadian Teacher]

I have to cast my vote against chalk. It is dirty and makes me choke. The added cleaning cost more than outweighs the cost of witeboard markers.

Oh, BTW, if you keep the board erasers clean it is much better when you wipe the board. Even university students like cleaning the erasers for the teacher.