Who is supposed to clean the board?

[doc700]

I teach a science class with a lot of writing on the board. There are classes directly before and after me. I'm curious what the etiquette is for board erasing. Is the prior class professor supposed to erase the board and leave it clean for the next instructor? Or should the entering professor clean the board for their lecture?  The room has the boards that move up when you are done so you often don't need to erase during a 75 minute class but there is a lot to erase at the end and colored chalk available in the room.

[arcturus]

I teach a science class with a lot of writing on the board. There are classes directly before and after me. I'm curious what the etiquette is for board erasing. Is the prior class professor supposed to erase the board and leave it clean for the next instructor? Or should the entering professor clean the board for their lecture?  The room has the boards that move up when you are done so you often don't need to erase during a 75 minute class but there is a lot to erase at the end and colored chalk available in the room.

In my book: you clean up your own mess. Thus, the prior professor should erase the boards when they are done with class.

[Parasaurolophus]

Like arcturus, I think that everyone is responsible for cleaning their own board at the end of the lesson.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Like arcturus, I think that everyone is responsible for cleaning their own board at the end of the lesson.

I agree, although clearly not everyone sees it this way (e.g. whoever has my classroom before me).

[jerseyjay]

When I was an undergraduate, back when there were blackboards and chalk, I remember that professors in classes before mine would often leave stuff on the board, and my professor would erase the board as he went. Because of this, I must admit, for the first part of my time as a professor, I thought it was not the responsibility of a professor to erase his (and it is often his) board after writing it.

However, I have come to the realization that this is obnoxious. I now erase the board after my class. The only times I do not are: (1) if somebody steels the eraser and I cannot actually erase the board; (2) if I have the last class at night and I know that the janitors clean the board overnight.

As an aside, I think that PowerPoint has made it less likely to find paragraphs and paragraphs written on the board. I also remember that at times a science or maths professor would leave intricate equations on the board, with a note saying, please do not erase. This was also in large halls where you could slide multiple blackboards into position.

[mythbuster]

The classroom starts with a clean board every morning. Therefore you should leave the room in at least the shape it started in. If you wrote on it, you should also erase it.

[Hegemony]

Apparently the tradition in math classes is to for the next person to clean the board, so students can study the equations until the last possible minute. The prof of that class cleans the board of the class before them.

What happens when you have a math class, then a non-math class, then a math-class, then a not-math class, in the same room? What happens is that both sides complain at each other. No need to ask me how I know.

[Liquidambar]

Apparently the tradition in math classes is to for the next person to clean the board, so students can study the equations until the last possible minute. The prof of that class cleans the board of the class before them.

That's not the case at my current school or other schools I've been associated with.  I think your math department is taking advantage of you.

[Langue_doc]

The etiquette is to clean up after oneself--which means that one leaves the blackboard clean before leaving the classroom. It's quite annoying to have to clean up after grown-ups. It's even more annoying if the professor having to clean the blackboard is shorter than the prof who just used it.

[EdnaMode]

I'm also of the 'clean up after yourself' opinion. One thing that really annoys me, and I've never seen it done anywhere besides my current institution, is when a professor leaves a board full of scribbles and a note that says 'do not erase.' Even if I don't need the board that day, I'll erase it. Sorry, it's not your personal classroom that no one else teaches in. If you want that info to be available to students (or whoever) after class, make a handout, or take pictures with your phone and post it in the LMS.

[apl68]

Speaking of not erasing the board... 

One of our high school English teachers had a former student who had covered one of the chalk boards in her classroom with a remarkable life-size portrait of Shakespeare reclining in a field of flowers, all done in colored chalks.  Since the teacher really just used the other board at the front of the class, the chalk-art work remained there for years.  When that teacher retired, the next teacher, who happened to be my mother, left the picture there. 

It was still there a few years later when Mom left teaching high school for a new career teaching college.  I wonder whatever happened to it?  Did it stay up until the building was eventually torn down?  It lasted an amazingly long time for something so inherently ephemeral.

[ciao_yall]

I teach a science class with a lot of writing on the board. There are classes directly before and after me. I'm curious what the etiquette is for board erasing. Is the prior class professor supposed to erase the board and leave it clean for the next instructor? Or should the entering professor clean the board for their lecture?  The room has the boards that move up when you are done so you often don't need to erase during a 75 minute class but there is a lot to erase at the end and colored chalk available in the room.

How would you prefer to see the boards when you enter class?

Then, do that for the next person.

[mbelvadi]

[...] or take pictures with your phone and post it in the LMS.

Phone camera technology has really changed this since we were all undergrads. Students don't need a lot of time after class anymore to copy everything down; they just take a picture - done!

[secundem_artem]

Don't be a jerk.  Clean up the board before you leave the room.

[kaysixteen]

Anyone seriously believe that a prof has the right to leave a classroom with his material strewn over the board?  Really?   That is more or less as obnoxious as a prof's delaying his departure from the classroom to the point where the next guy's class will be late in starting, esp when the next guy is expecting to write something on the board prior to starting class.