Putting in the Summer Professionally

¹ "Putting in the Summer Professionally" was published in two parts in "Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine," July and August, 1883. The excerpt included here is taken from Part 2. The other portions are only tangentially related to the author's experience as a schoolmaster.

² Since this is an excerpt from a longer article, here is a bit of background:
In the earlier passages, we learn the author is young -- "a beardless youth" -- has a State teaching certificate, and is offered a summer teaching position in Lake County in Northern California. We also learn later that he attended Brayton College. The story takes place sometime in the years following the Civil War, placing it from the late 1860's to the early 1870's, a time when common school teachers were more likely to have some higher education and certification than they were in the first half of the 19th century.

³ In an earlier part of the story, the author had been offered a teaching job in the town of Coyote, then told by a man named Stumpit that the offer was withdrawn because "we learn that you formerly taught at a negro school in Stockton." The author denies the assertion, simply because it is not true. He does not make clear, however, whether he would have found it objectionable to have taught at "a negro school." His only statement on the topic is, "Memories of the [Civil] war were still fresh in the minds of the people in those days, and Coyote was largely settled by men of Southern sympathies."

⁴ The author's mention of his attraction to the "buxom lasses" in his school is as close as I have seen to an honorable schoolmaster being romantically inclined toward any of his students. The possibility of romance is always present when the schoolmaster is young, since many of the females in his class are often his age or a few years older, but there is a clear taboo against teacher-student relationships in 19th century literature. Among the stories I have found, only "The Schoolmaster's Progress," by Caroline Kirkland, comes close to breaking the taboo. The schoolmaster courts and evenually marries a schoolgirl, but she is not his student; she attends a neighboring school. Kirkland's story is included in this collection.

⁵ Both the number of students and their age range is typical of 19th century common schools in small towns across the country.

⁶ "Boarding around" is the rule for schoolmasters in most common schools of this type. Teachers' wages are too small to cover lodgings and food, so the parents of the schoolchildren share the burden by each of them housing the schoolmaster for days or weeks at a time.

⁷ Although it sounds like the schoolmaster has a genuine rebellion on his hands, the narrative that follows is a classic example of a tradition sometimes called "turning out the teacher." The students bar entrance to the school and a mock battle ensues.
As was made clear early in the story, the young men in the school are more than a physical match for the schoolmaster, so if they truly disliked him, they could have thrown him out at any time, as often happens in one room schools.

⁸ Though the narrative continues with a few more adventures by the author, this is the end of his teaching experience.