St. John Baptist de La Salle
Patron of teachers, educators, school principals
Saint John Baptist de La Salle (1651–1719), canon of Reims and heir to a comfortable fortune, gave away both his stall and his inheritance to found the Brothers of the Christian Schools — the first community of laymen, neither priests nor monks, vowed to the gratuitous education of poor children. He invented the modern classroom: students grouped by age and ability, taught in the vernacular rather than Latin, with simultaneous instruction replacing the medieval tutor model. From his Conduct of Christian Schools descended the universal school system of the Catholic Church. Pius XII proclaimed him patron of teachers in 1950.