Based on personal sources stored in the collections of the Shushenskoye Museum-Reserve, the problems of rural school teachers in the Minusinsk District (Uyezd) are characterized. In line with modern methodology – microhistory, the problems of public education are considered not from the formal-legal, organizational side, but from the inside, from the point of view of direct participants in the events – students, their parents, teachers. For the first time, memoirs and diaries of residents of the villages of Shushenskoye and Sagayskoye are introduced into scientific circulation. Based on their study, an idea is formed of the problems of organizing rural schools, the difficulties of a communicative, socio-cultural nature that teachers had to face in the Minusinsk District (Uyezd) in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The category of rural teachers was distinguished by poverty and insecurity, and experienced moral difficulties. Small strokes, random phrases, words in the texts of personal sources contain what is absent in official documents: peasants’, students’ attitude to learning, teachers, including female teachers. Thanks to numerous details and facts, everyday life is filled with interesting nuances, and teachers appear as living people.