All the students have lockers on the British TV show Skins.
My high school - mid-1990’s - had lockers, not the huge ones you see on TV, they were about half the size, with one row stacked on top of the other.
They also weren’t in the halls like on TV, they were on the bottom floor, by the cafeteria, so it wasn’t really convenient to get to them between classes, except at lunch, unless maybe you had two classes both on the first floor.
Had lockers in middle school and high school. In middle school, they were shared, but were full height and pretty wide – maybe 12-14". But because they were shared, they had dividers inside, with a vertical divider for the bottom four feet, and two shelves up top. The smaller kids could squeeze in (it was more of a “hey, lets see who can fit! cool!” sort of thing, no bullying involved). In high school, we had individual, full-height lockers, but they were skinner – about 6" wide.
This was in the Detroit area, where everyone needs a heavy coat and boots in the winter.
ETA: my lockers lined the hallways.
My former high school, on the edge of downtown Buffalo, had wide full-height lockers.
I should say “has full height lockers” - the schoolmm=m, whcih was built in the 1910s, recently underwent a multi-million dollar renovation and expansion project, but the lockers we had in the early 1980s remained, even though it seemed like everything else was either unrecognizable or restored to like-new condition.
Not any more. Most of them have been removed. Why do you think backpacks have become so prevelant?
Lockers are just places to store stuff you shouldn’t have on campus anyway.
Everyone had lockers **and **backpacks when I was in school in the 1980s & 1990s. You carried the books & supplies you needed at the moment in your backpack and the rest was left in your locker. If you had 7 classes that required a textbook & looseleaf binder each, it would not make sense nor be comfortable to carry all that around for the entire day.
Thanks to lockers, every so often I’ll have a dream where I have to go to my locker to get a book for homework, but the locker is on the other side of the building, and I can’t find it, and I can’t remember the combination, and I have to run back, but I’m too late and miss the bus home.
Stupid lockers. I haven’t had a locker for 25 years and I’m still worried about them.
In the early 90s, we only used our backpacks to carry books to and from school. Once classes started, the backpacks went in the locker, and we would return to our lockers between periods (as needed) to pick up/drop off supplies. As far as I can tell, lockers are still in full force here and used in much the same way.
My high school had both full size and half size lockers. The seniors got the full size ones (which were also closer to the entrance. It also didn’t hurt that my school had a small student population (my graduating class was ~50)
Sacramento CAlifornia area student, in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
I had a half height locker in Jr. High and High school, till my senior year when the lockers at the High School I attended were removed (1993). Shortly after that, I understand they removed the lockers from both the local Jr. High’s as well.
All part of the “Zero Tolerance” program to crack down on school crime.
Didn’t work, but nobody really cared about that.
In high school (late 70s) I was supposed to share a locker with a stoner. I was worried about that but luckily he quit school so I got the locker to myself. It was full height. We had to share because the school grew a lot but they didn’t add lockers - they used trailers for a lot of the new classrooms.
The large high school built near me and finished a few years ago has no lockers, for exactly that reason.
Yeah, we had full-height lockers in the 60s, and a common prank was “stacking” somebody’s locker. This meant that you rigged up all their books to fall out, and carefully shut the door while holding them in place. The victim would then fling open their locker and have their stuff scatter all over the hall. The school administration had a policy that you could not padlock your locker, so that teachers could look in them. I once rigged mine up with a flashbulb to flash in the face of the perpetrator should somebody try to stack it. The principal opened it …
How long did you have between classes?! We only had twice in the day where you could make it to your locker - one long break in the morning and then lunch. You carried a backpack because you’d have books for a couple classes between those breaks.
My first high school had normal full height lockers but also a little extra square locker stacked above. There was a latch inside the main locker that you flipped to open this little mini-locker. I kept my brown bag lunch in mine so my locker didn’t smell like bananas or peanut butter. The hatch was actually double the width of the main locker, every two lockers had two hatches stacked vertically above it. The really short girls often couldn’t make much use of this locker.
Whoa, you had to carry all your books to and from school every day? And from class to class during the whole day too? That is bad.
We had the aforementioned coat/cloakroom through elementary school, and left our books in our assigned desks. In high school we got a locker – tall thin section below for coats, square section above for books. (ETA, what fiddlesticks mentioned, with the release latch in the tall lower section).
In my school, each passing period was eight minutes long. Usually enough for a short detour to the locker, but not if you had to cross the entire school both ways. I usually carried books and notebooks for two or three classes, depending if my schedule allowed a trip to my locker.
5 minutes. You’d generally carry books for two classes at a time, although carrying for just one was not unusual. We had eight periods, with one of those being a lunch break.
The lockers in my Middle/High (combined) school (late 90s) were two-high, fairly wide, and never received maintenance. The private school I went to took possession of the building in the 1980 I think, and they probably never fixed a single one. I’m not sure how they were assigned, but quite often people would use just a workable one they found empty in a corridor where they hung out - they were relatively unpopular to use due to the high likelihood of being useless or becoming so with normal use. People typically slogged all their books around, even with the school being 3 stories (although each floor was fairly small).
Junior high (or middle school as it’s known today) each student had a locker to him/herself, but it was either a top locker or a bottom locker, not full-length. They were enclosed in hallways outside the bathrooms. Good place for knife fights among the tough girls, and I guess the guys were the same, but oddly there were not so many tough guys. Seventh-graders mostly got lockers on the bottom, which was not desirable.
High school, the lockers were full-length but there were not enough of them. You could share a locker with someone of your choice (preferable!) or, if you had no friends, the school would assign you someone (losers!). I shared with one girl for two years. Seniors were supposed to have their own lockers, but for some odd reason I remember very little of my senior year, so maybe I got one, maybe not. The year after I graduated they got a new high school and it had plenty of lockers. And a swimming pool. And probably ponies for all.