I was talking

[DLgal]

If they don't have lockers and have to carry everything in a backpack all day, what do they do with the books at the end of the day? If they don't have lockers and have to take them home, why a set of books for at home? This isn't making sense to me.

One set of textbooks stays in the classrooms and all students share them. There are enough for each student to have one during the period. Each student only carries a large 3 ring binder with dividers per subject, along with a chromebook or laptop (every student gets one free to use for the school year or they can bring their own), lunch and a bottle of water or whatever. The only students with lockers are the athletes that have after school practices, and those lockers are only allowed to be used to hold uniforms or equipment. The lockers are located in a locker room attached to the gym. They are not anywhere near the classrooms, but the gym is attached to the parking lot/drop off zone, so kids drop off their stuff when they get to school.

To be really honest, though, most classes don't even use textbooks much anymore. I think my son has cracked open his math book twice this year. Most teachers put assignments online, and they print out relevant homework sheets as needed. Since all students have a computer for personal use, they mostly do stuff via Google classroom or Canvas.

 

[tvguy]

Of course when I was in Elementary School in Houston our concern was not hall or no hall, but the fact that there was no a/c. You want to know what misery is try learning in a non air conditioned school in late August/ Early September at a time when shorts were not allowed in school and wearing blue jeans and a collared shirt sweating your little tookis off!

LOL. No humdity here, but not unusual to be 100 degrees at the beginning and end of school year. No AC. no big deal, often classes moved outdoors They got Federal grants in my school district about 20 years ago and all the schools in my district got AC then, including the ones that since have been closed!

 

[NotUrsula]

South Louisiana. Most of our schools did have hallways, but for awhile after WW2 the "modern" ones did not, including some that had been built with leftover Quonset huts. I transferred into one briefly in 6th grade. I hated it with a passion, because we had to drag coats everywhere all day. (Contrary to what a lot of folks from elsewhere think, South Louisiana can be quite cold in winter because it is so damp and windy. 37F can feel like zero. In classrooms with a lot of glass and 2 doors open to outside, teachers tend to crank the heat to compensate.) In a regular school we hung up the coats in the morning and then retrieved them when it was time to go, but there you had to stop and put the coat on/off each time you changed classes.

That middle school was built along traditional 1950's lines, long and low, but the buildings were only one room deep, with windows on 2 sides and a door on each window side. Simple, you would think; cut through. But, oh no, we can't have passerby seeing those unruly children change classes, so we were restricted to only walking between the buildings, not on the outer perimeter, so you had to walk back to the center-line sidewalk to get to the other side of the building. The only time we were allowed out front was during fire drills. (Now that I think about it, I wonder how they are handling the pandemic? They probably had to break their sacred rule of "children may be heard but not seen".)

Anyway, that particular model was a short-lived experiment, and by the mid-1960's they had gone back to buildings with hallways. They discovered that they were cheaper to heat and cool, held up better in hurricanes, and were not as susceptible to incursion by bugs or rodents. (Lockers in the outdoor-hall schools were impossible; they always ended up full of "wildlife" that got in through the vents.)

Now if you go back a lot further in time, there was also the short-lived concept of the open-air school. THAT was interesting: no walls at all, even in really cold weather. It was done to combat the spread of communicable disease, and all that fresh air was considered good for kids, too. The midwestern district that my DD is in had a couple of these buildings; they had garage doors for walls, and they were only kept closed for blowing rain or snow. https://www.messynessychic.com/2016...ut-walls-a-forgotten-age-of-open-air-schools/

 

[bjscheel]

Older DD's building for 4th and 5th had no hallways- but also not doors to the outside. They actually walked through a series of connecting classrooms to get to certain rooms. They did put up furniture to kind of delineate the walking-through path from the rest of the classroom but it was odd.

She was part of the last group to use that building and many of them cried on their last day. Cornfields and cow pastures right outside in a tiny town, it was a peaceful place.

 

[Mysterian]

Never heard of schools without hallways. Nuns in the hallway in grammar school, hall guards and hall passes in high school.

Current picture from my high school I graduated from 59 years ago. Looked the same back then. No walking guidelines back then nor face mask posters on ceiling.

View attachment 563605

For an old school, that hall is immaculate!

 

[Mysterian]

My kids high school has NO LOCKERS. Nor did the middle school. Kids have to carry their backpacks everywhere all day. They get a set of text books to keep at home and a set to use at school.

Most California schools are like this. The high schools are more like college campuses with several different buildings. It doesn't rain enough to justify hallways.

Not even lockers for gym? That would suck to have to carry sweaty clothes with them the rest of the day. California is weird, next you'll be telling me there's a theme park with human sized mice and some sort of fantasy castle.

 

[Mysterian]

One set of textbooks stays in the classrooms and all students share them. There are enough for each student to have one during the period. Each student only carries a large 3 ring binder with dividers per subject, along with a chromebook or laptop (every student gets one free to use for the school year or they can bring their own), lunch and a bottle of water or whatever. The only students with lockers are the athletes that have after school practices, and those lockers are only allowed to be used to hold uniforms or equipment. The lockers are located in a locker room attached to the gym. They are not anywhere near the classrooms, but the gym is attached to the parking lot/drop off zone, so kids drop off their stuff when they get to school.

To be really honest, though, most classes don't even use textbooks much anymore. I think my son has cracked open his math book twice this year. Most teachers put assignments online, and they print out relevant homework sheets as needed. Since all students have a computer for personal use, they mostly do stuff via Google classroom or Canvas.

Ok this answers the gym question.

 

[DLgal]

Not even lockers for gym? That would suck to have to carry sweaty clothes with them the rest of the day. California is weird, next you'll be telling me there's a theme park with human sized mice and some sort of fantasy castle.

They do get a gym locker. But they are tiny and literally only hold clothes. They bring the dirty gym clothes home every week.

 

[Feralpeg]

I taught at a school in Florida that had no halls. All classrooms opened to a courtyard area.

 

[Dan Murphy]

For an old school, that hall is immaculate!

Yes. I was there a few years ago, looks the same as it did in the late 50's/early 60's.

 

[fly girl]

Not even lockers for gym? That would suck to have to carry sweaty clothes with them the rest of the day. California is weird, next you'll be telling me there's a theme park with human sized mice and some sort of fantasy castle.

Our gym lockers at my HS were metal baskets that would pull out. It was only used for clothing. We put our backpacks somewhere else, for the life of me I cannot remember. I think just on the floor next to the benches. IDK if the boys locker room was the same.

 

[low-key]

You people in California that say we dont have hallways here, the only two schools I know in LA, are Hollywood High and Walt Wittman High (room 222) both had hallways

 

[Kittyblue]

You people in California that say we dont have hallways here, the only two schools I know in LA, are Hollywood High and Walt Wittman High (room 222) both had hallways

Road trip - I'll show ya how we do things here

 

[Kittyblue]

c

 

[clori]

I went to a high with indoor hallways. However once you went inside a hallway door you were in a giant area - there were pretty much no real classrooms. It was a giant open concept room on each side of the hallway. There were no doors, walls etc just sections with perhaps a divider, bookcase, blackboard on a stand etc diving areas. I could pick a different class to listen to whenever I was wanted. The only classrooms with walls/doors were for things like band and probably shop type classes.

My Latin classroom was next to a sociology classroom. Sociology was only 1/2 year so I heard the same class 4 times in my two year of Latin. The sociology teacher was super boring and told ths same stories, same jokes, same punch lines etc. My Latin teacher probably heard him several times a day. At times he would yell out the punch lines.

 

[chickapin parterre]

1960s, Joshua Tree California. our building was one long building of five classroom ( there were other utility buildings on campus), the doors faced the southern sun, the wall of windows to the north, looking out over the undeveloped Mohave desert, as the school was built on ridge that no one had developed, but now would have great views.

Our school yard was fenced over the ridge, many a kickball and basketball probably went over the fence into the gully. First weekend in may we would spend our time clinging to the chain link fence, double daring each other to ride the Octopus that was part of the Joshua tree turtle races carnival being set up before our eyes.

but the one horizon that I doubt us snotty nose elementary kids did not appreciate was the foothills of the Joshua Tree National park. many of us drew them during art time in the classroom, but talked little of them....in the 1960s they were just a pile of rocks good for a family picnic. and oh yeah...we could see Gram Parsons motel room ...... well it was not famous then, but those elementary kids in the mid 70s had a view. Which is fine with us 60s kids, because we had our fill of US marine convoys on the highway below and squadrons of huey helicopters flying above us during the day...on there way to Vietnam.