After growing up in Oklahoma City, John Thompson earned a doctorate in American history at Rutgers University and became an award-winning author. He worked as a researcher for the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and as a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood. Thompson is a former award-winning teacher at the former John Marshall High School and Centennial Mid-High School. Now retired, Thompson lives in Oklahoma City.
About 25 years ago, the Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS) combined the poorest half of John Marshall High School with the poorest half of Hoover Middle School, creating a school with staggeringly intense concentrations of extreme poverty, trauma, and, eventually, chronic absenteeism. Too many non-educators assumed that families, such as those we served in the […]
