Ira Poole is a retired educator who lived and currently resides in Rogers Washington Holy Cross, a historic East Austin neighborhood that was built by and for Black professionals after World War Two. In this interview, Poole recalls his journey of finding and paying for a home in the neighborhood, his life challenges, his views on education, and more.
Interview Highlights
Finding a home in Rogers Washington
“And I came this way from 1010 East 10 street, and I found a vacant piece of property that’s where I would like to live on the spot. I would like to build a home. So then I had to go and find who this property belonged to. I found that it belonged to a Dr. Washington whose office was on 12th street. I asked him would he sell a part of this or would he sell all of it.”
Ira Poole’s work ethic
“I was running from one house to another. I had three jobs, I was working for Western Auto and I was doing work for a restaurant, but I wasn’t bartending at that time. But I later started bartending. I was doing yards when I could.I didn’t get to bed each night until 1:00 and 2:00. Be up the next morning to be in the classroom.”
Ira Poole’s innovative teaching methods
“And then I would put it up on the bulletin board with this colorful construction paper and the border. And this was very attractive. It was all in different colors. Meanwhile, whole Austin public schools were in the process of repainting all the schools on the inside.The paint, and those colors, it was discovered the colorful colors was inspiring and sharpening the brains of kids. Parents were wanting their kids to be in my room. Administration was having trouble with parents wanting to place their child in my room, which was fine with me. I had as many as 45 kids in my room.”
The story behind his famous “Statue of Liberty” yard
“I was going to use my students and we would take the map of the United States, pour it in concrete, and then set it out. Go look for a Statue of Liberty, in some way involve the schools to buy the Statue of Liberty. And we would put all this in a strategic place on the school campus.They wouldn’t let me do it. So I said, ‘if you don’t let me do it, I’ll do it myself.’My house was where it is now. So what I did then, I cashed an insurance policy, got that money, and I used that money to buy a Statue of Liberty.”
The meaning of education
“When we finished studying that unit on seeds, then we would go to the country, to my place, a pliable plot of land out there, and they planted seeds. So they studied the seed, but here they planted it and they saw how important the seed was to them. The education that I had changed was that a student’s reason for going to school was not to get an education, it is to prepare himself to live.”