Why was it that gym teachers’ offices used to be in a cage in the locker room? By ‘used to be’ I mean that I’ve found that this was the observation of people I’ve talked to who, like myself, went to high school in buildings that were built before the 1960s (I’m class of 1992). And of course I don’t think it was absolutely universal.
If memory serves, at my high school at least, the gym teacher’s office was also the equipment room, containing a lot of stuff that kids are likely to want to steal. So unless the teacher was there, you couldn’t get to the supplies that otherwise might just walk away.
That and teenage boys can be real assholes at times, outnumbering the teacher or coach. Having a cage separating them could help them better control a situtation. That and they would have access to the baseball bats if they needed a persuader when they came out of the cage.
@Si_Amigo clearly went to Fort Apache High School.
Stranger
This was how it was at my school.
Thanks for the reminder. Something I haven’t thought of in years, but yeah, it was just normal that there were “cages” in the locker rooms (Chicago Public Schools in 70s.) Most of the coaches had an office next to the gym, but there were a couple in the locker room. And another cage surrounded lockers that were used by sports team members (never recall that cage being locked.)
Could it have something to do with combining “the gym teacher needs to have access to the students in the locker room and vice versa” with “the gym teacher needs to maintain an office accessible to other teachers, administrators, and students via the hallway corridors” ? The “cage” thingie keeps coach office space from becoming an unimpeded pass-thru to the locker room, yes?
I think it’s just easier to keep an eye on the future humans from a cage. It needs to be locked, but so does an ordinary teacher’s office. There might be some professional status problem if gym teachers have real offices with walls and a door when most of the other teachers don’t.
Yea, the PE equipment just can’t be left unattended. In a high school, anything not under lock & key or a watchful eye is likely to go missing or get tampered with. Put yourself in the shoes of a bored 16 year old with open access to troublemaking devices like janitorial stuff, art equipment (photo chems, ceramic kiln/wheel), cafeteria deep fryer, biology dissection specimen cabinet, cymbals & trombones, bunsen burners. The sophomore mind boggles.
Cages are common in industrial settings, too. The maintenance dept is often completely fenced off for safety (dangerous power tools, unguarded equipment) and theft (a lot of expensive stuff around like copper wire/fittings) reasons. Incoming parts/ingredient in line to be inspected (or has already failed) needs to be kept quarantined from material cleared for production.
My HS was opened in 1965. The (male) locker room had a couple of equipment cages off to one side full of all the athletic gear the school owed. One end had a large office space with windows looking out into the locker / shower area. It had doors to both the locker area and to the exterior hallway on the opposite side from the windows. In there were the several desks for the several coaches / PE teachers. Plus filing cabinets, bookshelves, and the usual office gear of the mid 1970s when I was attending.
This was in the relatively benign weather of SoCal, but the coaches’ room and the main body of the school had heating and air conditioning. IIRC, the locker rooms did not.
I never had a chance to visit the female locker room, but to all descriptions it was functionally identical.
As I recall, there was a proper gym instructor office upstairs but the basement had the equipment, indoor track and a cage “office” so the instructor could get some stuff done while we were running laps or working the weight equipment. I figured it was partially for hands-off security and partially just as a mental separation that this was off-limits as we wandered the area. It was close to the center of the room.
One vivid memory is that, at least once a year, the instructor would express a need for something inside the cage and some show-off student would scale the outside and hop down through the open top to get it. So I don’t think it was intended for real security (like the traditional upstairs offices) much less to stop rampaging students or bears, just a passive measure to keep out the nosy and mark the teacher as “working on stuff” when they were in there while allowing them a full view of the room.
From what I remember of my high school locker room (mid 60’s, don’t know when the gym was built) the gym teachers (at least 3, probably more, including the head coach of the football team) had a regular office next to the locker room, with multiple desks and glass in the door, and maybe a window to the locker room. They had a changing room in there as well, I think, but I don’t know if they had their own shower. And I don’t remember where the sports equipment was kept, since I only did gym and never participated in sports otherwise.
I was inside that office briefly once, early in Freshman year, when my locker’s lock wasn’t securely fastened and I came back from an outdoor gym session to find my street clothes “stolen” and I had to go in there to report it. They had my clothes, of course, this was just their jolly way* of teaching me how important it was to lock my locker securely. To their credit, it is a lesson I have not forgotten.
*The gym teacher told me I would have to go home in my underwear, apparently sure that I would rather do that than wear my sweaty gym clothes, which I still had on. What a maroon.
“I used to be a heroin addict, but now I’m a Methadone addict.”
and those who cant teach gym become high school guidance counsellors.
I recall from middle school, which was built in the 1950s, that the gym teacher’s office was essentially a caged off corner of the locker room. Basically the experience of the OP. There was also a big window from the office into the gym, and to get from the gym into the locker room students would have to walk past the cage/office. About half of the locker room was directly visible from the cage, but the rest wasn’t. The bathroom was completely out of sight, and only the alcove outside the showers was visible. I don’t think it was possible to see into the showers, but the gym teacher could see anyone going to and from them. That wasn’t relevant anymore since we didn’t use them, and the tumbling mats were stored in there. I assume the cage allowed for the best visual and auditory monitoring of students, while not needing separate heating or ventilation (there was no air conditioning).
In high school it was a little different. That was also built in the 1950s or possibly the early 1960s. All the gym teachers had traditional offices in the hall outside the gym and locker room, with big windows into the hall. The only office/cage in the locker room itself was for the attendant who kept an eye on things and exchanged uniforms for anyone who opted for them (nobody did). I hesitate to call it a cage though, and I honestly don’t remember it as well. It was set up so he could see any students going into or out of the locker area to one side, while also looking down the aisle of lockers that the team sports players used. You’d have to walk past him to go to the bathroom or into the showers and the pool. The office was in that bath/shower area with a tiled floor and lower ceiling. So it might’ve had just a sliding cage door on one side and a big window on the other, with walls to the showers/bathroom on the other two sides.
Similar to the middle school situation, I suspect heating and ventilation were probably factors. In colder climates (this was Chicagoland) heating and ventilation tended to be supplied around the perimeter of the building. Enclosed offices in the building’s interior would need some sort of supplementary ventilation if nothing else, which adds equipment and expense. Keeping it open mitigates that, and it also allows the teacher/attendant to hear whatever shenanigans might be transpiring, which in a middle or high school locker room are numerous.
From Mad Magazine:
My HS was built in the sixties and I have absolutely no idea what anyone is talking about. I tried a google search for high school coach cage and go a bunch of pics of people named Cage and batting cages.
Something like this, but the coach’s/teacher’s/attendant’s office is in there. I think in my schools it was more of a chain-link fence kind of mesh, and it might have been tighter so students couldn’t climb it. It is (was?) common in industrial workshops, factories, repair depots, and such too. I suspect it was also just a quick and cheap way to cordon off an area for security.
