A beautiful place to live, the western one third of Tulare County consists of farming towns and communities, and the eastern section is National Forests. From north to south the communities are: Woodlake, Lemon Cove, Three Rivers, Exeter, Lindsay, Porterville (about 45,000 pop.), and Springville.
A foothill community in Tulare County, California, Woodlake was and still is a small ranching and orange farming community. Construction started on the high school building pictured below in 1964. What was a typical day in Woodlake High School in the 1960s?
- Woodlake High School 2013
Sally and another retired Woodlake teacher, Frank Ainley, discussed the "good old days" of teaching high school in Woodlake. They both taught from the 1960s until a few years ago. "Remember intercoms interrupting every class?" Frank Ainley remembered one specific intercom request during class. "I need to see you," Loverin bellowed over the loudspeaker.
"I can't come right NOW! I'm right in the middle of class," Frank answered the intercom voice as the entire high school listened.
"That's ok. If you're a good teacher, your kids will keep doing what they are supposed to do while you're gone," the principal responded again disrupting every class in the school. When Ainley returned to the classroom about 25 minutes later, students had completed their assignments and were quiet. No one was missing.
Both Frank and Sally talked about the kids doing projects, and keeping the teachers organized so that the projects ran smoothly. Students could drive in those days during the school day to run errands, if they had a license. So if the students needed something for the project, the teacher would just ask one of them to go get it at the store, and come back to class with it. Frank stated, "If they had to travel for sports or field trips, the kids drove, if they had parents written permission, of course."
Principal Loverin expected teachers and students worked together to complete service assignments. When he hired Sally a few days before the school year started, Loverin told her off-handedly, "We have an opening inservice for all the teachers the first day back to school. There will be about 60 people for breakfast and lunch." The implication was clear.
According to Sally and Frank, administrators made the assignments, then trusted the teachers to somehow accomplish them. Both former teachers remembered going into the Loverin's office upset about some issue, and coming out apologizing for taking up his time, and thanking him for the new assignment he just gave them. Yet both claimed teacher morale was at a high.
One day early in his career Frank asked Loverin, "When are you coming in to do an evaluation of me?"
The principal answered, "If I didn't think you couldn't do the job, I wouldn't have hired you." He didn't have an evaluation that year. He didn't have very many evaluations.
Frank talked about discipline in the school. The vice principal, a BIG guy, Herman Ziegler, disciplined with a big stick. Sally and Frank commented that both the principal and the VP were BIG. Apparently that characteristic got the job done in Woodlake. Frank and Sally both said the kids loved the principal and the vice-principal, Herman Ziegler, and most got good jobs after they graduated.
Judging from a different era, Loverin and Ziegler broke current laws, and would be removed from their schools. Frank and Sally saw them differently. Sally repeated an oft-said comment teachers said about Loverin, "He could have sold icicles to Eskimos and made a profit. The teachers loved him. He took care of them." Both teachers remember the 1960s with fondness and pride.
Sally became a counselor in the high school and brought national recognition to Woodlake High School a few years ago because she raised so much money for scholarships, and enabled students to attend college. Both Frank and Sally have been retired for about five years. Frank quit teaching in his mid-seventies. Today he ranches and is still active in the community. Sally retired in her early 60s and volunteers in the school and community.
I’m looking for pictures of the old veterans apartments . They were green . There’s a new drugstore there now where the apartments were . They were two stories wooden .
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