Truckin' on the Western Branch

After a few months, his mother decided it was a teacher problem and talked to Shafer. The next day Shafer told the children in Glover’s class that the class was just too big and he had to move one student. He picked Glover, who followed Shafer into a new class where he was happy to see the teacher, Ada Wainwright, smiling at him. The current middle school opened in 1968 on River Shore Road. In 1986 the new public Churchland Academy opened on an adjacent property. Churchland Primary and Intermediate School opened on Hedgerow Lane in 1976. No trace remains of the early schools that were all centered in the area now known as Academy Crossing Shopping Center between High Street West and Churchland Boulevard. The latest evolution of Churchland High School opened in January 1992 on Cedar Lane near Craney Island. Butch Morgan opened the newest Churchland High School as principal in January 1992, and Raymond Hale, former administrator at Churchland Junior High and principal at Cradock High, was assigned there in June 1992. Mark Didawick taught and coached at Churchland High, both on High Street and on Cedar Lane, for 10 years before becoming the athletic director at Western Branch High School in the 1997–98 school year. A Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, native, he still considers himself something of an outsider and questions what he sees.

Mark Didawick. Image by Sheally

From a coach’s perspective, the move to Churchland’s new high school and its better facilities was good, but as a teacher I didn’t notice much difference. Bigger is not always better. Take a school out of a community and you take the community away from the school. On High Street, the school was in the heart of the community.

I taught general math—practical math that helps kids with real life. But their parents rarely showed up on Parent-Teacher night. I tried to make math fun for them, and I blame elementary schools for turning students off of math.

The African American kids I coached lived in Jeffrey Wilson right across from Norcom High School but were bussed to Churchland High and I knew why—the numbers had to balance. When I drove them home, we’d talk about that because it seemed that they should be able to go to a neighborhood school. Politics are not the right way to zone communities. It’s a revolving system as people move from community to community, a continuous shifting. But I’ve not seen any real racial problems in either school.

West Norfolk School In the 1940s Freddy Fletcher attended West Norfolk Elementary School, a brick three-story building with wide steps that led up to the classrooms. The school had a coal-fired furnace, indoor bathrooms, a playground, and a big assembly room. He remembered the flat roof and that some of the more daring boys climbed to the roof and walked around the brick trim under the roof canopy to retrieve softballs. Fletcher went to Churchland School in seventh grade with Emily Duke his teacher. He graduated from Churchland High in 1953 in a class of 49. Mary Jane Spradlin remembered that Mildred Tierney was the principal of the West Norfolk School where the lower grades were downstairs, with each grade having a separate row, and the high school grades were on the second floor.

West Norfolk School, Mildred Tierney, principal. Mary Jane Spradlin is the little girl in front of the grandmothers on the right hand side of the photo.

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