Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/609

 586 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS school hours she began seeking ont some elementary school at a distance where she could sit and observe children and teacher. By and by she found a schoolroom where teacher and children seemed in perfect accord, like a happy family. She visited again and was then asked to take charge of a class. This became a regular part of her program. It was here that she got the insight into child nature and inspiration which her mother had said she lacked. In making her own practice school she was unconsciously preparing herself for her early promotion to the headship of the first practice school estaly- lished in the city. The working out into new lines in this case was characteristic of her constant preparation for progress from one position to another. When in 1862 she began teaching in Chicago^ she was only seventeen years of age. She started at once, as has already been pointed out, into a systematic study of the problems of education, and gave all her strength and mind to the work she had selected. An interesting story is told of her first year in school, when, having been put into one of the higher grades, she had pupils larger and older than herself. It was her cus- tom to work at school until late in the day ; and one evening a big, overgrown, troublesome boy remained to remonstrate with her for staying so long at school and going out alone on the streets in the dark. We have, however, no record that the youthful schoolmistress heeded this suggestion. After one year in this position she became head assistant in one of the large schools. In 1865, with the children of this school she marched across the city to the public funeral of Lincoln. At the age of twenty she became the first head of the prac- tice school for teachers. Here again, as in her work at the Normal School, she was beforehand in her preparation for the position that she was to fill. In the Normal School of Os- wego, New York, the so-called object-method of teaching was in vogue at the time and Ella Flagg went there to study this system before she took up the work in the practice school. One of the earliest attempts at practical application of art work in the Chicago Public Schools was begun by her when she got the students to decorate tastefully the practice school