I remember that! School edition

School’s out for the summer so let’s look back at some things you don’t see any more in the classroom.  I wonder why?

The SRA reading lab!  It was 1965 reading software.  These boxes contained color-coded lessons which you pulled out and took back to your seat, reading a story and then answering multiple choice questions.  You could go as fast as you possibly could work at your own pace and try to beat the smartest kid in the class to the purple level improve your reading comprehension without the teacher’s help!  The same folks who developed these kits went on to create software for both IBM and Apple so we were the guinea pigs for the educational software my grandkids will use.

We also used these to increase our reading speed.  To this day I read too fast and I blame it on my 6th grade teacher Mrs. Chandler, who pushed us to keep increasing our rate.

Watching a movie was a huge treat when I was in school.  The film monitor would roll the projector out of the ‘film closet’ and down the hall to the classroom. 

Any guesses what these are?  We were given one of these to chew and then our teacher would walk around the class asking us to show her our teeth.  Your plaque was dyed bright pink!  Imagine how fun that was – especially for the poor kid who never went to the dentist.  I think there was a lot of public humiliation in school when I went.

Look! Look!  See Spot go!  I learned to read using these Dick and Jane books.  I just love seeing them again.

Yep.  Petty pants.  We had to wear them because we had to wear dresses to school but we still wanted to play on the rings at recess.

     

Recess.  I would usually head straight for the tetherball but I also remember Chinese jump rope, playing Batgirl or sneaking a troll doll in my pocket. 

Here is a standard piece of equipment in every elementary school custodial closet… guess what it is? An eraser cleaner, Silly!  If you were lucky, you got to take a box of erasers down there at recess, fire this thing up and run those erasers right over that vacuum suction hole.  I can still remember what it smelled like.  This duty was either punishment or reward, depending on how nerdy you were.

School in the 60's.  Those were the days my friend.