Photos Used By Permission: Click on Photo to Visit ABANDONED OKLAHOMA Website
Used By Permission of ABANDONED OKLAHOMA It was built and put into service in 1911, over a hundred years ago. It has been abandoned since 1994. And it still stands there, in the middle of Oklahoma City, just down the street from the OU Medical Center - an empty testament to times past. Page Woodson is a structure of historic significance, still listed as a "Segregated Negro High School". It was called the Page Woodson Fifth Grade Center, and it's the site of my first teaching position. In fact, the picture at left looks very much like my original classroom.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared to face my first class in 1990. Part of my apprehension must have been due to the interview process. I was not the master of the job interview, and I had been on a few with no job offers. When I met Principal Higgins, I was more than a little nervous. My first impression told me that this man was like Joe Clark, as portrayed by Morgan Freeman in the uplifting movie, Lean on Me. In the interview, Mr. Higgins asked be the unusual question, "What kind of car do you drive?" When I described my 1984 Ford Tempo, he said that was good "because they like to steal Chryslers from the playground (Yes, we parked on the playground, and they locked the chain link fence during the school day.). I really believe my car got me the first job in my professional career.
During the week before school was to begin, teachers were called in for training. That's nothing new, but the subject matter of the training was more of a shock to this rookie. It was not facilitated by some educational guru or even by a principal or teacher leader; it was led by the Oklahoma City Police Department. There I was, hoping to teach children, and learning instead about gang hand signals, tagging, Satanist and gang symbolism, drug deals, and how to take a gun away from someone. This did nothing to squelch my apprehension! To top it all, Mr. Higgins expected me to teach students from cultures quite different from any I had experienced.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared to face my first class in 1990. Part of my apprehension must have been due to the interview process. I was not the master of the job interview, and I had been on a few with no job offers. When I met Principal Higgins, I was more than a little nervous. My first impression told me that this man was like Joe Clark, as portrayed by Morgan Freeman in the uplifting movie, Lean on Me. In the interview, Mr. Higgins asked be the unusual question, "What kind of car do you drive?" When I described my 1984 Ford Tempo, he said that was good "because they like to steal Chryslers from the playground (Yes, we parked on the playground, and they locked the chain link fence during the school day.). I really believe my car got me the first job in my professional career.
During the week before school was to begin, teachers were called in for training. That's nothing new, but the subject matter of the training was more of a shock to this rookie. It was not facilitated by some educational guru or even by a principal or teacher leader; it was led by the Oklahoma City Police Department. There I was, hoping to teach children, and learning instead about gang hand signals, tagging, Satanist and gang symbolism, drug deals, and how to take a gun away from someone. This did nothing to squelch my apprehension! To top it all, Mr. Higgins expected me to teach students from cultures quite different from any I had experienced.
Used By Permission of ABANDONED OKLAHOMA That said, I held my own during the first week of school, and my fifth grade class did not have any discipline issues. We were learning history in most of my classes, but I was also responsible for teaching reading to my homeroom class. Unfortunately, there were no reading books. "No problem," I said. "I'll use my history books to teach reading." Meanwhile, kids were freestyle rapping and break dancing in the halls between classes.
If I could say nothing else about my school, I could say it had character. We didn't need the radiators since it was over 100 degrees. The box fans in the windows drowned out most of my teaching, and our endless sweating drowned out any attempt to focus. Nevertheless, I pressed on.
I had a good friend at the time who was in the Air Force. He was going to Iraq in the war effort after the Iraqi military invaded Kuwait. I asked my students to write letters to him, and we soon earned the attention of the local media.
If I could say nothing else about my school, I could say it had character. We didn't need the radiators since it was over 100 degrees. The box fans in the windows drowned out most of my teaching, and our endless sweating drowned out any attempt to focus. Nevertheless, I pressed on.
I had a good friend at the time who was in the Air Force. He was going to Iraq in the war effort after the Iraqi military invaded Kuwait. I asked my students to write letters to him, and we soon earned the attention of the local media.
Used By Permission of ABANDONED OKLAHOMA Then came the word that the student population had not met expectations, and Mr. Higgins needed to downsize the staff. Being the new guy, he told me I needed to find another position in the district (I interviewed for three other schools and was offered all three positions.). I upgraded to a school in a less violent area. Later in the same school year, Mr. Higgins was reported to have taken several knives from his students, and there was at least one gang shooting across the street from the school. I was only at Page Woodson for a few days, but when I found the pictures of the school on the Abandoned Oklahoma website, it all came back to me - the parking lot/playground, the staircases, the hallways, the auditorium, and the swimming pool. Yes, this school - a Segregated Negro High School put into service some 18 years before Martin Luther King Jr. was born - had a swim program, and a rather large pool facility (The pool was already closed when I worked there, and I never laid eyes on it until I found the AOK website.).
Used By Permission of ABANDONED OKLAHOMA I suppose it is just a building, but it seems to me that there was a lot of history there. I didn't appreciate that history when I was there, and I'll probably never drive through the area again, but it does provide one thing for me now: it reminds me of how close we are to a major part of American history, so close, in fact, that I touched it every time I walked through the doors, up the stairs, and into my classroom. I saw it in every wooden floor slat, every door knob, and every window frame. I just didn't know it at the time.
I can't even imagine the teachers who came before me, the lessons that were taught in that second floor classroom. The teachers didn't look like me. They didn't use the same methods. They read from different textbooks. They adhered to oppressive laws.
The water fountains were not for "Negroes", and the restroom weren't labeled for "Colored Only"; the fact is the whole school was labeled as such. To think I was working, daily, in such a place - surrounded by such a history - really is unbelievable.
I can't even imagine the teachers who came before me, the lessons that were taught in that second floor classroom. The teachers didn't look like me. They didn't use the same methods. They read from different textbooks. They adhered to oppressive laws.
The water fountains were not for "Negroes", and the restroom weren't labeled for "Colored Only"; the fact is the whole school was labeled as such. To think I was working, daily, in such a place - surrounded by such a history - really is unbelievable.
Special thanks is extended to Justin Tyler Moore of the Abandoned Oklahoma team
for permission to use the photos in this post.
for permission to use the photos in this post.
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