My Journey Through the Alabama School System

If you’ve been following along, you already know about my stint as Santa Claus back in the second grade at Holt Elementary. I won’t rehash my glory days in the red suit, but that marked the end of my quiet, uneventful early school years.

By the third grade, my family moved to the Gorgas School community, and my educational journey got a whole lot more… colorful. Looking back, my schooling was a wild mix of dedicated educators, questionable architecture, and some uniquely 1970s Alabama moments.

Gorgas Elementary: Slides, Portables, and Parakeets

My first teacher at Gorgas was Miss Bolten. Third grade came with some serious adjustments: dodging bullies on the recess field, getting used to a new bus route, and surviving the playground equipment. Back then, we had a massive, towering slide with absolutely no handrails. It was survival of the fittest, but it was a good year.

Fourth grade put me in a portable building out front with Miss Pruitt, who was genuinely a great teacher. I learned a lot from her and enjoyed the class.

Fifth grade brought Miss Tittle. She was an older lady, an absolute hoot, and beloved by the whole school. She even kept a live parakeet in a cage right there in the classroom. You couldn’t ask for a better experience.

The 6th Grade: Carpeted Disasters and Plaster Steer Heads

Sixth grade started normally under Miss Freeman. Every morning at Gorgas, we’d say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing The Battle Hymn of the Republic before cracking open a book. But halfway through the year, we transitioned to the brand-new Walker Elementary.

Walker was touted as a “state-of-the-art” replacement for Gorgas. Let me walk you through the front door: reception on the left, cafeteria down the hall, and a massive library in the center. Branching off from the library were the grade wings.

Here was the catch: there were no actual classrooms. Somebody, somewhere, thought “open-concept” learning was a brilliant idea. The only things separating the classes were rolling partitions. If a teacher was talking two “rooms” over, you heard every word. They clearly had no clue how loud a building full of elementary kids could get.

To make matters worse, whoever designed this place must have failed their architecture class because they put carpet on all the floors. Between the damp Alabama red clay, daily recess, and the natural messiness of kids, those carpets were completely ruined by the end of the year.

Perhaps distracted by the chaos, Miss Freeman pretty much stopped teaching during the second half of the year. Instead, she spent class time mixing plaster and pouring it into molds to make steer heads and other concoctions she could sell. I actually still have mine hanging in my shed—a red and white steer head with white horns!

Northside: Hit or Miss Education

The next year, we all moved up to Northside, which housed everyone since there was no separate middle or high school. Education here was what you made of it. If you wanted to learn, you had to put in the effort.

Here is the rundown of the unforgettable teachers that shaped my time there:

• Mr. Walton (Biology, Physics, General Science): A truly great teacher. He insisted you actually learn the material and was the one who eventually encouraged me to pursue a trade at Shelton State. I’ll always appreciate him for that.
• Reverend Thomas (Math): He was a good teacher, but he had a terrifying habit of making you stand up at random to recite your multiplication tables. Because I struggled with my tables, my solution was simple: I signed up for Algebra I, II, and III just to avoid his class!
• Ms. Hayes (Algebra): She actually expected us to learn the material. When a few of us failed a test, she declared we would retake it until we passed. I actually worked hard and genuinely tried to learn it, but the material just wouldn’t stick. I just couldn’t do the work, and I didn’t pass the test. Ultimately, she learned a quick lesson from me on that one! It remains the only failing grade I ever received.
• Miss Williams: In her class, we spent an agonizing amount of time making a booklet about Alabama. We had to research the state and meticulously cut every single page into the shape of Alabama before binding it together. We were farm kids; we had grass to cut and gardens to work when we got home. We didn’t have time for construction paper arts and crafts.
• The Shop Teacher: He was supposed to teach us how to use lathes, chainsaws, livestock care, and welding. Instead, he pointed to a welder, gave us zero instructions, and told us to weld a bead by the end of the week for a grade. Realizing how dangerous that much electricity was, I found a scrap piece of metal someone else had already welded, slapped my initials on it, and turned it in. To this day, I can do a lot around the farm, but I still won’t touch a welder.
• Miss Sue Ann Dale (Spanish): My favorite teacher of them all. I took her class for three years and still only know a few words and some Christmas carols. Mostly, I remember her sitting on her desk while teaching us those carols—swinging her legs up on the high notes and back down on the low notes.

The Wild West of the 1970s

You have to remember, this was 1977 and ’78. It was a different world. Look out into the Northside parking lot, and you’d see rows of four-wheel-drive pickup trucks, every single one with a gun rack in the rear window—and guns actually in them. When school let out, you went hunting. Nobody batted an eye.

The craziest memory I have is looking out the east side windows toward the softball field. The field was wet, so the school had actually landed a helicopter on the pitcher’s mound earlier in the day, letting the rotors spin to dry the dirt.

Later, while we were sitting in class, a deer suddenly bolted across the empty field. Right behind it was a pickup truck, driving in circles, with someone leaning out the window taking multiple shots at the deer.

Did we duck? Nope. We just sat there and watched. We were a bunch of country kids who didn’t know to be afraid of guns. Like I said, a totally different world.

Breaking the Ceiling at Shelton State

After surviving the open classrooms of Walker and the wild days of Northside, I headed to Shelton State Technical College on 15th Street.

This was the pre-PC era. I studied Data Processing, which meant writing programs, punching them onto physical cards using a card punch machine, and running them through a massive mainframe just to get a report. I graduated in 18 months and immediately started working for the college.

A few years later, I pushed myself even further. I enrolled at Shelton State Community College, finished my education, and earned my degree.

I was the very first person in either side of my family to get a college degree. Sure, it was a community college, but a degree is a degree. Looking back at the slide with no handrails, the plaster cows, and the flying punch cards, I’d say I earned every bit of it.