Before Laura married Almanzo Wilder, she taught school for several terms in order to earn money for her family. She left school and took her first teaching job when she was only fifteen years old.
She began teaching at the Bouchie School, which was about 12 miles from her home in De Smet. The school was renamed the Brewster School in the book These Happy Golden Years, and it was often Almanzo who picked her up at the Bouchie’s so she could spend every weekend with her family in De Smet.