Melissa Garner is counting down school days with her kindergartners but, unlike her students, she won’t be moving to first grade.

After 33 years, most spent teaching kindergarten, Garner is retiring from the Baker School District.

She started in 1992 at Haines Elementary — the year that school reopened after closing in 1985.

“That first year there were just three of us on staff,” Garner said. “The parents were the custodians.”

That first year, she spent mornings in the Title I program and as a teacher assistant and secretary, then the afternoons as a bus driver.

She especially remembers the snow that winter, and how Cliff Cole would put chains on the school van so she could safely deliver students around Baker Valley.

The next year Garner taught half-day kindergarten, then worked as the secretary in the afternoon. By the third year she was teaching full time.

She spent 10 years at Haines, and moved with her 1993 class up through second grade.

“I knew those kids so well,” she said.

She’s taught only kindergarten since 1996 through several schools — South Baker for seven years, in a wing of Baker High School for five years, and Brooklyn Primary for six years, during which kindergarten transitioned to a full-day program.

In 2020, kindergarten moved to the Baker Early Learning Center in the former North Baker School building. For the last two years, Garner has taught transitional kindergarten, which offers a bridge between preschool and kindergarten.

“They’re old enough to go to kindergarten, but aren’t quite ready,” she said. “They have more time to play and explore. They learn to line up, be humans, how to sit and listen to a story, and how to be kind to each other.”

She’s had so many adventures over the years — meeting her class at 2 a.m. to see a comet, starting the tradition of a field trip to the Boise Zoo, Thanksgiving feasts where the kids help make the meal, monthly family projects and hatching eggs in the classroom.

“Only one time we didn’t have any hatch because the power went out on the weekend,” she said.

Although Garner has taught a few different grades, kindergarten is her favorite.

“You see so much growth in every level of education, but you see the most in kindergarten,” she said.

Plus, kindergartners love their teachers.

“They think their teacher is so wonderful and smart,” she said. “They put me on a pedestal I don’t deserve.”

From kindergarten to graduation

For each of her 33 years, Garner has filed her class photo into a folder, along with a paper each student fills out with his or her favorite color, a photo of a best friend, and a drawing of “what I liked best about school this year.”

She labels these by year and then, 12 years later, she pulls out the file and gets a list of graduating seniors from Baker High School.

She makes a poster for each of her former kindergartners — pasting on the year and “Congratulations!” on one side, and a copy of their class photo and that special paper scrawled with their work. Then, as graduation nears, she delivers each one to the graduating senior.

Garner said this is a tradition her mom, Barbara Wendt, started at North Powder.

And it’s a tradition that will continue for 12 more years, until her current class dons graduation caps at BHS.

“I still have 12 more years, as long as I can get the list of seniors,” she said.

A missing photo

Garner has taught about 750 kids over 33 years, and she’s had a number of students who are the children of her former kindergartners.

“I want to retire before they say ‘you were my grandma’s teacher,’” she said with a laugh.

Her filing system is nearly perfect except for one specific year — she’s missing the class photo from the year 1998-1999 when she was still at Haines.

“I would love to get a copy of that picture,” she said.

Retirement party

Everyone is invited to a retirement party on Saturday, May 17, from 2-4 p.m. at the Missouri Flat Grange at the corner of Hughes Lane and Cedar St.

She’s working on a slideshow for the party that documents her years of teaching.

“I literally have thousands of pictures,” she said.

Except for that elusive one, from 1999.