Jesse Stuart
...he could teaching. His mother and father convinced him to go see the Superintendent of schools. He did and they offered him a job at Winston High School, there would only be fourteen students, and Jesse would be the only teacher. His salary would be one hundred dollars a month. He found the students there to be poor and ragged but very bright. He entered his pupils in academic contest all around the area and they won. He had to study every night, just to keep ahead of the students. He had a good year teaching there and was prepared to teach a second term until he was offered a job as Principal of Lands burgh High School; they had heard what his students had done at the academic contest and thought that he would be good for their school. He accepted the offer. He taught at Landsburgh for one term and did great things for the school, he got the parents involved in the P.T.A. and let them know what their children had been up to such as gambling and staying out half the night. There were not enough teachers for all the students so Jesse taught right along with them. At the end of the term he was not rehired because he asked for a raise in pay that the school board would not approve. He spent the summer working on his father’s farm. Then he went to Vanderbilt University for a year of graduate work. While there he wrote, and studied. He was then offered the job of Superintendent of Greenwood County Schools, which consisted eighty-three country schools. He was only making a hundred dollars a month again. He fought for teacher’s salaries to be raised he fought for more buses and for the end of the Trustee system. He made a lot of enemies and had to keep to himself for no one would talk to him because he bucked the system. He then went on to be Principal of Maxwell High School. This school had three hundred and fifty students and twelve teachers. It was a modern school with class rooms separated and doors to each room. It had athletics, and a library, Jesse would no longer have to walk for miles to get books so that the students would have them. He was earning twelve hundred dollars a year for the eight-month school year. He only received three checks before the depression hit, he and the teachers work harder than before for no pay. He said that this shows what a dedicated profession that teaching is. They taught for a long time without pay. He was Principal ...