I was about to discard an old pack of carbon paper,
but my daughter, a second-grade teacher, decided to
keep it for her classroom.
On a rainy day that kept the class indoors, she took the opportunity to acquaint the children with how things used to be before modern tectnology. Each child was given two sheets of clean paper and told to put the carbon sheet between them. Then she explained that they were to write with a pencil on the top paper and then look at the bottom sheet.
The kids were amazed. Several students asked if it would work with a pen, and another asked what would happen with a red pencil. They experimented, and the boy with the red pencil exclaimed that it even changed color. Several kids asked if they could take the sheets hone to show their parents.
What was once indispensable in offices years ago, was considered almost worthless. Yet the carbon sheets turned one recess into a time of learning, wonderment and joy.
--Irene Evers