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Abigail Fillmore
Abigail Powers Fillmore began teaching school at the age of
sixteen. Not only was she a well-respected teacher, she was
also a passionate and enthusiastic lifetime learner. Nineteen-year-old Abigail Powers was already an established school teacher in Sempronius, New York, when eighteen-year-old Millard Fillmore (1800 - 1874) became her student. Abigail encouraged Millard to pursue his ambition of a law career. He became President and she was the first lady. -
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Men and Women
In 1800, 90 percent of American school teachers were men; by 1900, three-quarters were women. The feminization of teaching—a job once filled primarily by transient young men, often saving up to finance a legal or medical education—was, in large part, why education became one of the few white-collar unionized professions in the United States. -
William McGuffey
He began teaching at the age of 14 in the early 1800's. He found that it was hard to teach the concept of reading because of the lack of material there was to read. William went on to later develope the first widely used set of textbooks. (McGuffey Readers) -
Common School
Organized school systems came around in the 1840's. Education reforms helped create statewide common-school systems. These reformers sought to increase opportunities for all children and create common bonds among an increasingly diverse population. They also argued education could preserve social stability and prevent crime and poverty. -
Civil War Ends
The Civil War ends with Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. Much of the south, including its educational institutions, is left in disarray. Many schools are closed. Even before the war, public education in the south was far behind that in the north. The physical devastation left by the war as well as the social upheaval and poverty that follow exacerbate this situation. -
Deaf School
Boston creates the first public day school for the deaf. -
Chicago Strike
Most female teachers earned just half the salary of a male teacher, and their jobs were getting harder and harder each day. In turn of the century Chicago, classrooms housed 60 students, many of them new immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe who couldn’t speak English. Yet teacher pay had been frozen for 30 years at $875 annually (about $23,000 adjusted for inflation), less than a skilled manual laborer could earn. -
Chicago Strike
November 1902, the Andrew Jackson School on Chicago’s West Side hosted the nation’s first ever teachers’ strike. -
Littleton School Committee
"God seems to have made woman peculiarly suited to guide and develop the infant mind, and it seems...very poor policy to pay a man 20 or 22 dollars a month, for teaching children the ABCs, when a female could do the work more successfully at one third of the price." -- Littleton School Committee, Littleton, Massachusetts, 1849 -
Great Depression
The Great Depression begins with the stock market crash in October. The U.S. economy is devastated. Public education funding suffers greatly, resulting in school closings, teacher layoffs, and lower salaries. -
Baby Boom
At one minute after midnight on January 1st, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling is born, the first of nearly 78-million baby boomers, beginning a generation that results in unprecedented school population growth and massive social change. She becomes a teacher! -
Religion
In the case of McCollum v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court rules that schools cannot allow "released time" during the school day which allows students to participate in religious education in their public school classrooms. -
Refugee Act
The Refugee Act of 1980 is signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on March 18th. Building on the Immigration Act of 1965, it reforms immigration law to admit refugees for humanitarian reasons and results in the resettlement of more than three-million refugees in the United States including many children who bring special needs and issues to their classrooms. -
School Shooting
Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old student, kills two students in a dorm and then 30 others in a classroom building at Virginia Tech University. Fifteen others are wounded. His suicide brings the death toll to 33, making it the deadliest school shooting incident in U.S. history. -
Free College
On January 9, President Barack Obama announces a plan to allow two years of free community college for all American students. However, with Republicans in control of both the House and Senate, there seems little hope that this proposal will be implemented any time soon.
