Part 1." ... this wretched state of meaness and servility": the teacher in the early republic. The rare adventures of Tom Brainless / John Trumbull
The private tutor / Philip Freneau
Icabod Crane / Washington Irving
from The Algerine Captive / Royall Tyler
Memoirs of a woman teacher / Emma Hart Willard
from The District As It Was / Warren Burton
The school-master in the dark south / Daniel Alexander Payne
Part 2. "As to the moral condition of the people ... ": the teacher and the common school. Bronson Alcott's method / Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
Death in the school-room / Walt Whitman
from Lock Amsden or The Schoolmaster: A Tale / Daniel Pierce Thompson
A struggle for the mastery / Edward Eggleston
Letters from Pioneer Women Teachers / Cythia M. Bishop and Martha M. Rogers
from Life on the Sea Islands / Charlotte Forten
from The March of Progress / Charles W. Chesnutt
Part 3. "The heart is the teacher": the teacher in the progressive era. from The Letters of Anne Sullivan, 1887 / Anne Sullivan
The arts at Hull-House / Jane Addams
Of the coming of John / W.E.B. Du Bois
from Morris and the honourable Tim / Myra Kelly
A schoolmaster of the great city / Angelo Patri
from The Heart is the Teacher / Leonard Covello
Children of loneliness / Anzia Yezierska
Split cherry tree / Jesse Stuart
Part 4. "Tell him the house is falling in": the teacher, 1945-1994. A wreath for Miss Totten / Hortense Calisher
Doctor jack-o'lantern / Richard Yates
from Death at an Early Age / Jonathan Kozol
Teacher / Richard Dokey
Socrates, Plato and guys like me: confessions of a gay schoolteacher / Eric Rofes
Lily chin / Rosetta Marantz Cohen.