The purpose of the school was to train young women in the classic kindergarten methods of German educator Friedrich Fröbel; most of the students took a two-year course of study.
By 1912, with growing enrollments, she appears to have resigned from her teaching job to devote her full attention to The Lesley School.10 The school added training for the early primary grades, and in 1917 opened a Household Arts department.
In 1914, Edith Lesley Wolfard hired Getrude Malloch, a kindergarten teacher with experience in both Boston and Cambridge schools, as a part-time instructor.
Miss Malloch rapidly moved into administration as well as continuing to teach, and frequently accompanied Mrs. Wolfard in her travels and professional work on behalf of kindergarten education.
Edith Lesley purchased the 29 Everett Street house her family had long rented in 1915, turning it into the headquarters of The Lesley School.12 A few years later the Wolfards added a one-story brick addition to 29 Everett St. for classes and student boarding, and began to buy up neighboring properties, turning them into dormitories.
In 1928-29 the school was rebuilt with a garden and quadrangle between Everett and Mellen Streets, giving the residential campus the form it still has today.
The Lesley School gained a reputation for solid teacher preparation focused on extensive experience; graduates readily found employment across the state as well as in other regions of the country.
The school's leaders and faculty kept up with changes in teacher education requirements and philosophy, adding a three-year course, more liberal arts, and refining pedagogic methods and theory.
Enrollments declined in the mid-1930s as a result of the Great Depression, while Edith Lesley Wolfard began to struggle with chronic illness.
In 1938, she received an honorary master's degree from Suffolk University, which in many ways marked the end of her active involvement in education.
However self-reported records from earlier in her life cite Miss Newman as the source of her high school education.
6 See household listing, 1880 U.S. Census, Bangor, Penobscot County, Maine, Ward 1, Roll: T9_485; Family History Film: 1254485, p. 97.4000, Enumeration District 25, head of house Alonso Leslie [sic].