Enter now to win a copy of the book Frontier Teachers:
Stories of Heroic Women of the Old West.
Throughout history teachers have been at the forefront of all civilizations, educating and inspiring the next generation and keeping societies moving forward. Frontier Teachers captures that pioneering, resilient, and enduring spirit of teachers that lives on today.
These women, many at the ripe old age of sixteen or eighteen, were trailblazers. They risked it all – traveling thousands of miles on crude trails through wilderness, across deserts, and over mountain passes – not just for the promise of a better future for themselves, but for the opportunity to bring education and the joy of learning to the children of the western frontier. They did as much to settle the Wild West as celebrated lawmen, gold seekers, and the railroad.
The women of the West broke the mail stranglehold on the teaching profession, which was dominated by men on the East Coast. Today, more than seventy percent of teachers are women. And although, sadly, it took more than a hundred years, the descendants of these pioneers, through union organizing, established the single-salary schedule that finally guaranteed female teachers equal work, passed a collective-bargaining law to give teachers a voice in their profession, and boldly made it so female teachers couldn’t be fired for simply getting married.
To learn more about brave educators in an untamed new country read
Frontier Teachers: Stories of Heroic Women of the Old West.
