Images of Schoolteachers in America

Pamela Bolotin Joseph, Gail E. Burnaford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN:
  9780805830873
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135674748
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book explores images of schoolteachers in America from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, using a wide range of approaches to scholarship and writing. It is intended for both experienced and aspiring teachers to use as a springboard for discussion and reflection about the teaching profession and for contemplating these questions:

What does it mean to be a teacher?
What has influenced and sustained our beliefs about teachers?


New in the second edition
* The focus is shifted to the teaching profession as the 21st century unfolds.
* The volume continues to explore teacher images through various genres--oral history, narrative, literature, and popular culture. In the second edition, the authors place more emphasis on the social-political context that has shaped teachers' daily experiences and the teaching profession itself. In the study of teacher images and schooling, the essays draw from feminist research methods and the critical tradition in educational inquiry to probe issues of power and authority, race, social class, and gender.
* The emphasis is on the multidimensionality of teacher images rather than normative characterizations.
* Six totally new chapters have been written for this new edition: an "invented interview" spanning 100 years of school teaching; portraits of progressive activist teachers; an exploration of teachers in fiction for young adults; a retrospective of the satirical cartoon show, The Simpsons; a study of crusading and caring teachers in films; and an overview of progressive classroom practices in "the new millennium." Seven chapters have been thoroughly revised to reflect current scholarship and the authors' evolving knowledge and interests.

Images in Oral Histories and Narratives

2
Good Women and Old Stereotypes: Retired Teachers Talk About Teaching

Nancy Stewart Green

Mary Phillips Manke

In the quintessential women’s profession, how have women interpreted their role and their work? We looked for an answer to this question in interviews with 12 retired women teachers and in the images they communicated of their lives and careers. To give readers some sense of these women’s personalities and motivations, and of the social and historical contexts within which they made their choices, we begin with brief biographies, in order of seniority, of the teachers we interviewed.

All of these women were elementary school teachers who taught in the Chicago or Milwaukee area. We contacted them through currently working teachers and through the Chicago Retired Teachers’ Association. They were not selected systematically, except that we purposefully selected an equal number of African American and White teachers for interviews. The women did share, however, a number of characteristics. All but one were in the first generation of their families to be educated beyond high school. (This is not surprising, given our time frame, as they were all born before 1930, the years in which high school attendance became common in the United States, but college attendance was still relatively rare.) All held bachelor’s degrees, although three earned them during their careers, having attended one or two years of normal school before beginning to teach. Three had earned master’s degrees.

Most taught and lived in the same city or community in which they were born. All but one were married, and 8 of the 12 had children. Three of the teachers began teaching in rural schools in an area outside of Milwaukee that became suburban/industrial during their careers. The others taught in the city schools of Milwaukee or Chicago in working-class, immigrant, poor, or lower-middle-class communities.

Beyond these demographic facts, we found few generalizations that could be made about these women. Placing them in categories, such as “the rural White teachers” or “the older African American teachers” seemed unproductive to us. We could only say that, as a group, the 12 women displayed remarkable similarities in their images of themselves as teachers. These commonalities seem to transcend economic, racial, and demographic backgrounds, but exemplify pervasive cultural expectations of women in a women’s field.

Biographies

Leo Sparks, born in 1910, is an African American from Carbondale, Illinois, and the only one of our teachers who had a parent who was a college graduate. Her mother was a teacher; her father was “the only Black contractor in Carbondale.” She graduated from Indiana State Teachers College at Terre Haute in 1932 and came to Chicago looking for work as a teacher. She explained that, at the time, district regulations limited elementary teaching positions to graduates of the Chicago Normal School so as an “alternative” she worked as a playground supervisor and taught adult evening classes. When hiring regulations changed, she was assigned to the first of three all-Black elementary schools in the city in 1950 and taught until 1975. Fiercely independent and not reticent about her conviction that she was a born teacher, Leo Sparks stressed the importance of love and involvement with children’s families, as well as having high standards for children’s work. (All the teachers in this chapter are referred to by pseudonyms, except for Leo Sparks, who preferred that we use her actual name.)

Emily Downer is an African American, born in 1911, whose family was “poor as Job’s turkey” but strong, united, and devoted to reading. After graduating from Chicago Teachers’ College in 1932, in the depths of the Depression, she waited 6 years for a permanent placement in a city where Black teachers were allowed to teach only in all-Black schools. She taught for 35 years, first in primary grades, then as an elementary librarian, and then again in primary grades. She retired in 1971 because her principal moved her to the eighth grade. One of the oldest of the teachers we interviewed, Emily Downer emphasized most strongly the importance of order and of “sticking to the curriculum.”

Martha Corey was born in 1914 in Morgan Park, Illinois, an African American community on the edge of Chicago. She still lives there in the house where she grew up. Her father worked in the post office, and all the members of her family were great readers. She graduated from Illinois State Normal College in 1937, one of the few African Americans in her class. Because of Chicago’s policy of hiring only Chicago Normal School graduates, which was in effect until the late 1940s, her first position was as a substitute at the all-Black DuSable High School. Later, she taught physical education at two all-Black elementary schools and finished her 30-year career in the central office in the research and evaluation department. An avid student, Martha Corey completed 40 hours beyond a master’s degree and calls herself a “pseudo-intellectual.” She retired early, in 1972, frustrated by cutbacks in programs she believed were effective and the uselessness of the compliance evaluation work she was doing.

Pat Barnes, a White Chicago teacher, was also born in 1914 and graduated from high school during the Great Depression. She took care of children in people’s houses for 5 years, and then married and attended Chicago Teachers’ College, graduating in 1943. She began to teach only after her son began kindergarten in 1949. For most of her 30-year career, she taught at just one school, on the southwest side of the city. At first, her pupils were from European immigrant families; later, her classes included children from Latino and Arab families. She particularly enjoyed the experience of teaching in a small school, where teachers supported one another and could teach as they wanted to. She retired in 1976.

Sally Tate, a White teacher, was born in 1914 in West Bend, Wisconsin. She attended a county normal school for 1 year, and began teaching at age 18 in a one-room school. She taught for 4 years before marrying. She had three sons, and it was to “do things for them” that she returned to work when the oldest was 10. She taught in a two-room school and studied at night and during summers for a bachelor’s degree. After 5 years in a two-room school, she moved to the four-room Amy Bell School, where she remained for 20 years. During her time there, the school grew to be a large modern elementary facility. Sally Tate retired in 1981 because of her husband’s illness. After his death she substituted regularly for several years and still does so on occasion. She now volunteers regularly in the classroom where her granddaughter is the teacher.

Georgia Tunney had the most varied career of all the teachers we interviewed. Born in Alabama in 1915, she moved at age 6 to Pasadena, California, where she was the only African American child in her elementary school. She was sent on a scholarship both to high school and to Spelman College in Atlanta. After earning a master’s degree in early childhood education from Atlanta University, she taught in Thomasville, Georgia, and in Indianapolis before settling with her husband in Milwaukee. She taught first grade and kindergarten in the Milwaukee Public Schools. After a few years as a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Georgia Tunney initiated, and eventually directed, the Head Start program in Milwaukee. Retired in 1979 after 40 years as a teacher, she continues to be active as a volunteer and community leader.

Ellie Varney, an African American teacher, was born in Springfield, Missouri, in 1918. Although she had not expected to go to college, the National Youth Administration, a New Deal program, gave her the opportunity to attend Lincoln University in Jefferson City. The program ended before she graduated, but with help from her soldier brother, she was able to graduate in 1946. She taught for 3 years in the high school she had attended in Springfield, Missouri. Then, urged by friends who had opted for big-city life, she moved to Chicago, where she substi-tuted during the day and took courses at Chicago Teachers College at night. Her first regular assignment in an elementary school began in 1951. After a 2-year leave when her son was born, she taught at Shoup School in Chicago for 26 years until she retired in 1981.

Cora Ulm, a White teacher, was born in 1922 in a rural area north of Milwaukee. She studied for 2 years at Dodge City Normal before teaching for 4 years in a two-room school. Married to a returning soldier after World War II, she raised her children until 1962, when she resumed teaching. She took a job at Amy Bell Elementary School, near the family farm where she still lives. The school grew as nearby Germantown changed from agriculture to industry and suburban residences, and finally had enough children for a graded school. From then on, Cora Ulm taught third grade. She earned a bachelor’s degree in 1968 and retired in 1986.

Dot Miller, another White teacher from Amy Bell Elementary School in Germantown, was also born in 1922. She had 2 years of normal school before beginning to teach in a one-room school in Golden Dell, Wisconsin, where she remained for 7 years. After 1 year at a bigger school, she married, but continued to teach until her first child was born. Taking off only a year and a half with her first child and less than 6 months with her second, Dot Miller taught a total of 45 years before retiring. Once Amy Bell had become a graded school, she taught either second grade or grade 1–2 or 2–3 combinations. Like Sally Tate, she took courses at night and in the summers to complete her bachelor’s degree in 1957. She retired, reluctantly, in 1991.

Norah Krupar, a White teacher who was born in 1928, grew up in a poor Chicago neighborhood. She attended DePaul University, graduating in 1955. She was recruited by an elementary principal for his school in a poor neighborhood near the County Hospital. She enjoyed teaching there because she believed that, having grown up poor, she could relate well to the children she worked with. She took off 7 years to have two children of her own and then returned in 1967 to teach in another working-class school, this time working with “brain-injured children.” The designation was later changed to “learning disabled,” and Norah Krupar earned a master’s degree in special education. She stayed in the same classroom for nearly 20 years, but was forced to retire early, in 1986, because of illness.

Kate Turner was born in Chicago in 1929 and attended first a junior college and then Chicago Teacher’s College. Hearing that jobs were available in Milwaukee, she moved there and began a kindergarten teaching career of 34 years. She began as the first African American teacher at a mostly White school and taught at four schools in the city, including one for 12 years and another for 18. Kate Turner earned a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 1977. She had to retire in 1989 because of arthritis.

Frances Schmidt, a White Chicagoan, was born in 1929 and graduated from Chicago Teachers College in 1950. She says proudly that her class was the last of the selectively admitted classes in the coll...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Prologue
• Images in Oral Histories and Narratives
• Images in Textbooks, Literature, Television, and Film
• Epilogue
• Contributors
• Author and Name Index
• Subject Index