Kyle Walker, in a PhD thesis, discusses Joseph Smith Sr. working as a school teacher.
Kyle R. Walker, “The Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family: A Family Process Analysis of a Nineteenth-Century Household.” PhD diss., Brigham Young University, 2001, 249
He worked as a farmer, cooper, schoolteacher, and storekeeper, and engaged in several business ventures early on in their marriage. He experienced several major financial reversals, which eventually led him to move the family to Palmyra, New York.