Suzanna

A long long time ago, teachers were owls and students were sparrows. It was a time when schools had just started. And like you, all the little sparrows didn’t like school much. But when they started going to school they realised that it was a lot of fun.
This was because they could sit in the classroom and twitter and twatter away the whole time, while Miss Owl wrote with her white chalk on a white board! Yes, in those days, no one knew how to make a black board, so they had to use a white board. And since no one knew how to make a black chalk, they had to use a white chalk. So now no one could read anything that was written on it. So the lucky little sparrows didn’t have to learn anything because they couldn’t see anything.
Now many years passed this way, and the sparrows only learnt how to twitter away. They did not know anything else. They did not know that 1 and 1 makes 2 and that they should say ‘thank you’ when someone gave them 2 seeds. All they knew was that white board with nothing on it.
One sunny morning, a raven came along. Now ravens are mean birds and they like scaring everyone. So this Raven frightened Miss Owl so much that she flew out of the classroom. “Ha ha ha, now I am in charge of this class. And everyone has to listen to me,” and he walked up and down the classroom and the little sparrows were so scared they kept very quiet and still. The raven walked up and down the entire day. And pecked out of everyone’s tuck boxes. And when the bell rang, he flew up with a big huge tummy filled with all the yummy food the little sparrows should have eaten.
What the little sparrows didn’t see, however, was that the raven had walked around so much that he had turned everything around him as black as himself. Including the board! The sparrows all twittered in fright.
And the next morning when Miss Owl came into class and saw a black board instead of a white board she said, “Ah, that raven has done something good for us at last.”
And that is the story of how the black board was born.
Ever since that day everyone could see what was written on the board, and everyone studied and became doctor-sparrows and engineer-sparrows and President-sparrows.



(poster next to a blackboard in school)