Edith Lesley - The Lesley School

The Lesley School

In 1909 Edith Lesley founded The Lesley School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In its early years the school was also called The Lesley Normal School, the term "normal" based on the French école normale supérieure, a school to educate teachers. The purpose of the school was to train young women in the classic kindergarten methods of Fröbel, most of whom took a two-year course of study. The school enrolled nine students in its first year, and charged $100 in tuition. Most of the classes were taught by Edith and Olive Lesley, with a few part-time instructors to teach specialty classes.

The school was at first a part-time venture for Edith and her sister Olive, who both continued to teach in the Cambridge public schools. By 1912, with growing enrollments, she appears to have resigned from her teaching job to devote her full attention to The Lesley School.10 The school added training for the early primary grades, and in 1917 opened a Household Arts department. Enrollment grew rapidly in the 1920s, peaking at well over 300 students.

In 1912 Edith Lesley married Merl Ruskin Wolfard, an engineer.11 Merl Wolfard later participated closely in the expansion of the school, buying several of the properties that became dormitories for the boarding students. Olive Lesley left the school in about 1914, first to work with Wilfred Grenfell in Labrador, then as a proponent of the Girl Scouts of the USA, and finally journeying to France to work in war relief during World War I. She would remain in Europe for the balance of her life.

In 1914 Edith Lesley Wolfard hired Getrude Malloch, a kindergarten teacher with experience in both Boston and Cambridge schools, as a part-time instructor. Miss Malloch rapidly moved into administration as well as continuing to teach, and frequently accompanied Mrs. Wolfard in her travels and professional work on behalf of kindergarten education. Both became life members and worked on behalf of the International Kindergarten Union (IKU; now the Association of Childhood Education International).

Edith Lesley purchased the 29 Everett Street house her family had long rented in 1915, turning it into the headquarters of The Lesley School.12 A few years later the Wolfards added a one-story brick addition to 29 Everett St. for classes and student boarding, and began to buy up neighboring properties, turning them into dormitories. In 1928-29 the school was rebuilt with a garden and quadrangle between Everett and Mellen Streets, giving the residential campus the form it still has today.

The Lesley School gained a reputation for solid teacher preparation focused on extensive experience; graduates readily found employment across the state as well as in other regions of the country. The school's leaders and faculty kept up with changes in teacher education requirements and philosophy, adding a three-year course, more liberal arts, and refining pedagogic methods and theory. Edith Lesley Wolfard continued to set the general direction of the school, and she and husband Merl Wolfard divided the profits of the business; Gertrude Malloch, as Associate Principal and later Principal, was the de facto administrative head of the school.

Edith Lesley Wolfard traveled extensively in the United States, including the territories of Hawaii and Alaska, as well as in Europe, collecting artifacts to add to the educational and cultural experience of Lesley School students.

Enrollments declined in the mid-1930s as a result of the Great Depression, while Edith Lesley Wolfard began to struggle with chronic illness. In 1938 she received an honorary master's degree from Suffolk University, which in many ways marked the end of her active involvement in education.