Nearly 100 years ago unknown teachers and students scribbled lessons on an Oklahoma classroom chalk boards and they haven’t been touched since.
Just why this came to be remains a mystery but contractors removing old chalkboards at Emerson High School in Oklahoma City unearthed them this week, untouched since 1917.
“The penmanship blows me away, because you don’t see a lot of that anymore,” Emerson High School Principal Sherry Kishore said. “Some of the handwriting in some of these rooms is beautiful.”
Ironically enough the renovation was being carried out to remove the school’s current chalk boards and move four classrooms to more modern whiteboards.
A spokeswoman for Oklahoma City Public School District said it is working with the city to “preserve the ‘chalk’ work of the teachers that has been captured in time.”
The intricate lesson drawing reveal some interesting finds. One of which is a wheel that was used to teach multiplication tables. “I have never seen that technique in my life,” Kishore said.
The boards carry the work of both teachers and students. One common theme is pilgrims, which was a core part of the curriculum in 1917. How to be clean was also a topic discussed in the classroom that one day in 1917, now preserved forever.
“Their names are here; I don’t know whether they were students in charge that day that got to do the special chores if they were the ones that had a little extra to do because they were acting up,” Kishore said. “But it’s all kinds of different feelings when you look at this.”
