The Smell of the Whiteboard

I wonder if someday schools will be sued over whiteboard use? It's not so much the whiteboards, but the Dry Erase pens. The latest thing in education is directed instruction. All that means is that you have to make sure that the kids are actively engaged at all times and you are constantly checking their work through each of them having a small whiteboard and using it to show you answers. There is just one flaw in the system.

My first day using whiteboards for the students I had a room full of kids with dry erase pens. They really smell. But not only do they smell, after an hour, I honestly couldn't hardly breath. I had two students with asthma who asked to wait outside, meaning that they couldn't participate in the lesson. I was suffering with them, but felt I had to continue the lesson I had planned. It would have been one thing if students wrote their answers and closed the pens. But everyone started drawing, swapping colors, writing cute messages to me and their friends, all the while with the pens open, infesting the air with chemicals.

I can see the future lawsuits from children who swear they got lung cancer as a child--not from smoking cigarettes, weed, second hand smoke or breathing smog--but from hours of breathing the chemicals from dry erase pens for the sake of direct instruction.

We could go back to small chalkboards or slates as they were using in the pioneer days before mass produced paper. There's just one problem. I'm allergic to chalk.