"When school opens in September, I just want to get out of here," said Mrs. Helen Haynes, who is retiring after a 37-year teaching career.
"I'll feel like a fish out of water."
Mrs. Haynes, of Renton, has taught 18 years at Skyway School. Haynes, 67, a native of Minnesota, moved to Colfax as a youngster. Her husband Virgil died in 1928. Mrs. Haynes then completed requirement for her teaching certificate at Eastern Washington State College in Cheney.
"Teaching those days isn't like it is today," Mrs. Haynes said. "My first teaching assignment was on the Inchelium Indian Reservation near Chewelah, Stevens County."
"My two children who were 4 and 6 then, and I lived in a lean-to behind the one-room school. Only two Indian students spoke English, and I had an interpreter to help me."
"I taught the first through the eighth grades. I remember one boy was 18, the oldest first-grader I ever had."
Mrs. Haynes was the second teacher to stay at the reservations school a full term. The reason: Saturday nights Indian men sometimes would ride around the lean-to on horseback trying to force their horses through the door.
"Of course I was scared to death, but I told my students that if it happened again, I'd throw boiling water on the braves. "The word got around and it never happened again."
MRS. HAYNES EVENTUALLY moved to Pine City, Whitman County, where she taught until 1942. Mrs. Haynes began teaching at Skyway School when it opened in 1949. Her daughter, Mrs. Hugh Carney, lives in Renton, and her son, Lowell, in Bothell. She has 11 grandchildren, two of whom plan to teach.
Mrs. Haynes will be honored this evening at the school.
A SCRAPBOOK OF commendations will be presented to Mrs. Haynes.
Mrs. Haynes does not plan to retire completely.
"I'll be doing some substituting here," she said. "I always have my garden to keep up and I plan to visit my brother in Spokane.
"two of my former pupils always insist on walking me to my class each day. I guess they think I'm getting too old to make it on my own."
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