Many teachers at my school, Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California, prefer white boards and dry erase markers in their classrooms. Nonetheless, some of my classes still utilize chalkboards, and I am sure that teachers from many schools across the nation write with chalk as well. After months of being used, chalk can often times become a small nub that teachers may throw away. However, there are some rather interesting, unexpected, yet useful ways that chalk can be reused at home, described in the novel Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things: 2,317 Ways to Save Money and Time by Reader's Digest. For example, chalk actually acts as a polish when chalk dust is put on a damp cloth and wiped on metal or marble. If you want to preserve your silverware or silver jewelry, put one or two pieces of chalk with the silver to absorb moisture and thus slow the tarnishing process. Chalk is also handy in removing grease spots from cloth when rubbed on the spots, as it absorbs the oil very well. Perhaps the most interesting way to reuse chalk is to repel a very common and pesky  home intruder--ants. In the downstairs bathroom of my house, my brother and I recently experienced an invasion ants that were seemingly impossible to deter. After a few frightening swarms of ants, it became clear that we could not leave anything remotely edible or sugary in the bathroom, When trying to decide how to get rid of the ants, my dad suggesting using chalk. I though that his idea was quite strange, because I was not sure how chalk would improve the situation whatsoever. My dad proceeded to draw a line of chalk along all of the visible ant trails in the bathroom, and as a result, the ants were almost all gone within a few days. The ants are actually repelled by calcium carbonate in chalk, which is made up of ground-up marine animal shells. Overall, there are a surprising amount of ways to repurpose chalk, one of which helped me considerably. My final advice to students is that next time you see any little pieces of chalk in your classroom, let your teacher know about their usefulness and reuse!