Rubik's+Cube+Classroom

November 10, 2010 -- Erasing as Digging a Well

The number of pencils I have in my classroom without erasers has just topped the seventeen-jillion mark. One constant in elementary education is that, in terms of life expectancy, mayflies look positively ancient next to pencil erasers. It's like watching ice melt on a hot sidewalk. I started off the day with three dozen brand-new pencils, and already my more overzealous "mistake removers" are swiss-cheesing their papers with the metal ferrules.

I have a box of hand-held erasers, special crumbless jobs I ordered from the [|Blick] company, and I'm loathe to put them out, lest they go the way of the Pink Pearls I've used in the past. They end up looking like Pink Pearl leopards from all the graphite-ringed drill holes with which they are inevitably pockmarked.

I guess I'm looking for two things: some kind of strategy to help extend the life of pencil erasers, and a way to encourage students to hold off from the casual destruction of the materials.

Okay, three things: if anyone out there knows how to make erasers, I'd love to hear about it. Especially if there's a way to chemically break down, combine and then re-constitute old hand-held erasers, because if that's the case, I'm re-casting them in the shape of mayflies.