This is going back a ways. I started high school in 1976 (graduated in '80). The first couple years, everybody had to take a physical education class every day. Seems to me that the first semester in ninth grade we all had to take a conditioning class, which was really more of a survey of everything the school offered, and in later semesters we got to pick what class we'd do.
One of the things we did in the survey class was a couple weeks' worth of weightlifting. I liked it, because it was an individual sport, so you didn't rely on other people. More importantly, to me, other people didn't rely on me so there was less chance of being laughed at, yelled at, etc. I was a fat, nerdy, unathletic kid.
So when the time came to pick our classes, I took weight lifting for a couple of semesters.
Here's what I remember, 30 years after the fact...
The school had a designated weight room, maybe 30 feet x 20 feet, concrete floor and walls, with a big wooden board up high on the back wall with the school lifting records for (I think) bench and clean and jerk, most of the records set by football players.
The room had two or three home-made platforms with some kind of cushioning material a couple inches thick, covered by carpet, a couple of bench racks with benches, an old Universal machine, multiple Oly and standard bars and a zillion plates -- some York Olys and some rusty old standards. There were a few fixed-weight dumbbells, I think, but nothing very heavy.
In the class we mostly did bench press, some SOHP, some clean and jerk (always split clean and split jerk), and a little squatting. I don't remember any deadlifts, snatches, Zercher stuff, etc. We were also free to use the Universal machine -- leg presses were very popular, because (of course) you could put up a zillion pounds.
The classes weren't very structured, which I liked. So long as we kept busy, the coaches didn't hassle us. The down side was, there wasn't a lot of incentive to progress. I don't recall any efforts to record poundages/reps/sets/whatever -- you just tried to remember what you did last time and went from there.
The students were mostly boys, with a few girls here and there. As I recall, it was mainly smaller, younger guys and some unathletic upperclassmen. I'm guessing that most of the athletes didn't take the class because they were already lifting as part of their team activities. I know the football team lifted, and I expect some of the other boys' athletic teams did as well.
The coaches were two guys, one of whom was the wrestling team coach, the other was (I think) a defensive coach for the football team -- he was damn strong. I saw him bench something like 405 once, though I couldn't swear to the weight.
It seems to me the coaches made a decent effort to teach everybody clean and jerk, and did some form correction on bench press, but for the most part we were on our own. A typical class was mostly benching -- groups of three or four guys crowded around the bench, taking turns lifting and then spotting each other. The big goal for us smaller guys was to bench 135. As I recall, there wasn't a lot of interest in 1RM, people mostly tried to do more and more reps with the same weight, usually going to failure every set.
If you weren't in a group that was benching you might get with a couple of other people and do SOHP, or do leg presses on the Uni machine. I think we did curls and dumbbell kickbacks once in awhile.
Clean and jerk was my best lift. I weighed probably 140 and I was able to C&J 135 lbs. without any problem. I don't think I ever tried for more, though. I was satisfied to keep doing 135.
We also had a weight lifting team. I'm sorry now that I didn't try out, because it's a sport that smaller guys can excel at. A couple of my classmates joined up and did well. It wasn't a hugely popular sport, but it was respected. I can remember hearing info about meet results as part of the morning announcements. I'm not sure if our school was a major player in the statewide HS lifting scene, but we routinely did well in other sports so I'm guessing we did okay.
That's about all I remember now.