Teacher's Day



This special day to recognizes teachers affects everyone. You all had teachers during your years of schooling, you may have been a teacher yourself, or had an ancestor who was a teacher.

Using this theme, you can add some new information to the family history.

Interview family members and get them to tell about their favorite teacher and include maybe the least favorite teacher — and why. If you were a teacher or have a relative present or past teacher, it can be great fun to remembrance with them on some of the most unusual times as a teacher, strange occurrences, or special events. A great question is about how much salary they made as a teacher – that can be an eye-opener. 

I was a teacher for 7th graders for 18 years, so I for one do have some unusual stories. For example, one answer on a test was most unusual and not really the answer I was looking for but I accepted it. The question: Why is very little beef steaks been eaten over the years in China? The answer from one student was: “Because the beef steak would be very hard to cut with a chop stick.” Very clever! By the way, the correct answer was: With China’s high population and lack of available ranch grazing land, cattle can not be economical raised.  

Make sure to check the occupations of members on the family tree, some could have been teachers, even for just a couple years. Use census records, city directories, pensions, newspaper articles or check with the school systems of where the ancestor lived to see if there are any records of them. 

Photos: 1880s with a teacher for a one-room school, 1910 high school classroom with students and teacher, teachers in 1947 at Hay War Memorial High School in Australia and 1955-56 class of Miss Altman’s 4th grade at Memorial School in N.J.

Related FamilyTree.com Blogs:

Back to School for Your Ancestors

Yearbooks

Finding a Cousin in the School

< Return To Blog

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.