Luminaries

Ella Flagg Young

The third child of working-class parents, Ella Flagg Young remained at home until the age of ten. After Young taught herself to read and write at age nine, her mother allowed her to go to school with her older siblings.

Called to teach, Young found a practicing teacher to assist her in her second year of training, creating her own practicum experience and using it to test her potential in a real classroom. After graduation, she became a teacher in a Chicago ghetto school, the head of practice-teaching classrooms, a high school math teacher, principal in the largest school in Chicago, and then superintendent of schools (1909-1915). She worked in the Chicago public school system for 53 years.

Young devoted her life to improving democracy and education and accomplished several "firsts." When she was selected superintendent of the Chicago public schools, she became the first female superintendent of a major city school system. She also became the first female president of the NEA in 1910, a full decade before women gained the right to vote.

Young was a leader in women's suffrage, and collaborated with Jane Addams in social work. She also wrote monographs presenting educational theories that she developed with John Dewey.