| Anna Normal School opened in
Shelby County, Ohio in the fall of 1915, housed in one wing of the Anna School. A
comprehensive one-year training course was offered to prepare elementary teachers in all
of the basics. My mother, Gladys Gaines Foster, was a student at the Normal School during
its second year of operation. She graduated from Normal School in 1917 and began to teach
at the age of 18. Mother's first teaching was in Shelby County Schools, followed by
several years of teaching in St. Petersburg, Florida, making a total of eight years in her
early teaching career. After my father died in 1952, she went back to school and teaching,
graduating in 1958 from Ohio Northern University with a Bachelor of Science degree. She
continued teaching until she was 75 years old, making a total of 21 years in the Sidney
school system.
At the beginning Mother taught grades 1-8 in one-room schools, where she had all of the
janitorial duties, including building the fire to keep the classroom warm in cold weather.
Though she no doubt told me, I do not remember her salary in those early years, but I know
it was very small.
Scrapbook Reveals Rules for Teachers
The following rules for teachers in 1872 (before mother's time) were found in her
scrapbook.
1. Teachers each day will fill lamps and clean chimneys.
2. Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day.
3. Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the
pupils.
4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a
week if they go to church regularly.
5. After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the
Bible or other good books.
6. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
7. Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his
benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden.
8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or
gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention,
integrity, and honesty.
9. The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will
be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of
Education approves.
Perhaps some of this may be "tongue in cheek," but nevertheless these rules
are true indications of what was expected of teachers in those days.
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