Life

When first-grade teacher Bill L'Orange invited LIFE into his classroom 45 years ago, he offered the magazine's readers a glimpse into a world that few would have otherwise had access to — the world of the child, so foreign to many adults, as well as the world of a male elementary-school teacher.
At the time, a male elementary-school teacher (like a female college professor, as one education expert put it) was rare enough to be considered newsworthy. L'Orange, whose profession is feted each Oct. 5 on UNESCO's World Teachers' Day, taught a group of 28 students in a Chicago suburb. When he had begun teaching in 1967, he had been even more of a rarity. But, since then, American society had seen a small but noticeable uptick in the level of involvement men were expected to have in young children's lives, at home as well as in the teaching profession.