Early Arizona Women Teachers

Early Arizona Women Teachers

At the end of the nineteenth century, Arizona was not a state, merely a territory, with a fledgling government and an even more rudimentary school system. Great distances separated people and often the eight children required to start a school and hire a teacher could not be gathered in an area. When they could, however, the teacher was often in for a surprise. Holding school in old saloons, carrying water to the schoolhouse every day, having to use turned over barrels for desks, and being the sole caretaker of the schoolhouse were just a few of the hardships faced by teachers. For women teachers, there were still more: being paid less than male teachers, even though they were the majority, being unable to keep her job if she married, and not being able to attain higher positions such as superintendent or principal. Despite these conditions, women actively and ably pursued careers in teaching, and often went beyond the call of duty for their students and their community. By facing many obstacles and overcoming them, the early women teachers of Arizona greatly improved the status of Arizona schools and that of women everywhere.

In this period, the lot of teachers was a much more expanded role in the community than that of present-day teachers. Many teachers had to become translators when faced with the problem of teaching children who knew little or no English. In the book, Portrait of a Teacher: Mary Elizabeth Post and Something of the Times in Which She Lived, Ruth Leedy Gordon explains that Mary Elizabeth Post, an early schoolteacher in Yuma,learned Spanish simply to communicate with her students (10). She also wrote recipes for her pupils’ mothers in Spanish and went to their homes to show them how to cook new dishes (76). In their collection of stories from the pioneer days in Arizona, Dust in Our Desks: Territory Days to the Present in Arizona Schools, Alleen Pace, Margaret Ferry and L.J. Evans recorded that in an Arizona town called Morenci, teachers taught night classes for those who wanted to learn English, as well as those who wanted to learn Spanish (29). The language barrier created a lot more work for Arizona teachers, work that was not written in their contracts, but they took on the task of learning another language and teaching English to others without complaint.