Jessie Gray (educator)

Gray was born on 2 June 1876, in London,^[1] one of the eight children of Alfred Gray and Sarah Jane Percy Gray.^[2] Her parents were from Dorset. She moved to the United States as a child in 1881. She graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls, and the Philadelphia Normal School.^[3]

From 1896 to 1914, Gray was a primary school teacher in Philadelphia. From 1914 to 1942, she was a training teacher at the Thaddeus Stevens School of Practice, a normal school in Philadelphia. She was president of the Philadelphia Teachers Association.^[4] In 1925, she became the first woman elected president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA).^[5][6] As PSEA head, she raised awareness of the plight of aged and retired teachers without adequate pensions, asking a 1929 audience, "Can you hear 400 teachers ranging from 72 to 90, calling with feeble voices and tear-dimmed hearts to you for help?"^[7]

In 1933, Gray was elected president of the National Education Association (NEA),^[8][9] the first Philadelphian and the second classroom teacher to hold that executive position.^[10] Gray toured the United States as a speaker during her term as NEA president,^[1][11] and promoted school district mergers as a budget help during the Great Depression.^[12] She was succeeded by Henry Lester Smith in 1934.^[13]

Gray was a delegate to the World Federation of Education Associations meeting in Edinburgh in 1925.^[14]