Class Over After Teaching Grade School For 48 Years, Mildred Iyall Gets Warm Sendoff To Retirement

Hi, Mrs. Iyall.” “Hi, Mrs. Iyall.” “Hi, Mrs. Iyall.”

Soft greetings flew as children at University Elementary School filed into the gym. The boys and girls had come, in part, to say goodbye to a teacher whom many of them loved. For that matter, many of their parents loved her, too.

Mildred Iyall and her husband, Dan, sat in folding chairs by the gym door. She was the guest of honor, come to receive tokens of appreciation from her colleagues. Her career spanned 48 years - nearly half a century of teaching.

“Hi Mrs. Iyall. You look different,” said one boy walking by.

Forty-eight years, this tiny woman taught grade school; for 37 years, she taught second-graders right at University Elementary.

She taught with love and praise, remembering how her grandparents on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation raised her.

“They always told me I was the best. And I believed them,” Iyall said. “I wasn’t. But I believed them.”

By one classroom’s estimate, more than 1,175 children had the benefit of believing what Mildred Iyall told them.

“She never, never has brought a child down to the office,” said Dan, his pride clear.

“I always said if I can’t handle them, I shouldn’t be teaching,” said Iyall, 67.

The boy who told Iyall she looked different spoke with a child’s candor. And with truth.

A stroke shortly before the start of school last fall changed Iyall’s last year. Instead of teaching second-graders, she was learning how to walk and how to talk again.

“I thought I would recover instantly. But I didn’t. It’s been a long, slow process,” Iyall said.

What helped her get through this tough year?

Iyall didn’t credit her inner strength. Nor her optimistic nature. Or the hopes she bore that she could return to teaching.

“My husband, Dan,” she said. “He helped me in my teaching, too. The two of us have 94 years of education between us, you know.”

Dan Iyall, 70, is retiring as well, this year. It’s his second retirement. He taught, coached and led the Native American education program for Central Valley School District.

All the boys and girls were finally sitting and quiet in the gym.

When University Elementary Principal Phyllis Betts spoke into at the microphone, Mildren rose haltingly from her chair. Her walk is a bit uneven, her speech clear but deliberate.

Gifts followed gifts. A brass school bell, a memory book and an afghan with a commemorative message stitched by her friends. And then a gift of love: Everyone in the gym rose and clapped. And clapped and clapped.

This must have been the first standing ovation many of the children had ever joined in. It was one more lesson for Iyall’s students.

The pages of the memory book for Iyall are telling. Letters from colleagues are worded with utmost respect. One teacher wrote that she longed to “be a fly on the wall” in Iyall’s classroom.

Students write of their memories - and their amazement.

“Forty-seven years - wow! My parents aren’t even that old,” wrote Bryce Sanman, now a fourth-grader.

“If I had a different teacher, I’d die,” wrote Rachel Logsdon, a third-grader.

“Thank you for teaching me my times tables. Thank you for teaching me krsif,” wrote another student.

Some remembered Iyall’s stories. The time an intruder left Mildred and Dan Iyall’s home, for instance after hearing Iyall say “Get the gun, Dan.”

“You sent him packing,” the student wrote approvingly.

But one young writer said it all, for the hundreds of children who’ve been loved by Mildred Iyall:

“P.S. Thank you for the compliments you gave me at the party. I liked them.”