If you’re not a teacher and you don’t currently have kids in school, you probably don’t have a lot of reasons to go inside classrooms anymore—after all, I don’t think that schools would like it if strangers were wandering around the building and sticking their heads into classrooms. So you might be surprised at how much things have changed since you were in school! New trends arise, new technologies emerge, and what used to be cool falls out of fashion. Want to see what we’re talking about? We’ve gathered 40 examples of things that used to be common in school classrooms but have now disappeared. Read on to see if you remember any of these, and whether you knew that they are no longer being used.
#1: It Traps and It Keeps
When I was a kid, the absolute best part about going to school was the week before school, when my mom took me to the store to get my school supplies for the year. I was so excited to go get my Lisa Frank folders and a set of matching dolphin pencils and an eraser in the shape of a cupcake.
But nothing was better than getting a Trapper Keeper, which was basically an enormous binder. Why were we so excited about enormous binders? I have no idea, but we were. Sadly, these have gone the way of the dodo bird. Maybe it’s because kids do so much work these days on computers.