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The Story of Irene Helmich
The sun slowly rises on a beautiful summer day as Irene Helmich wakes her family. It's late August and the first day of school. Families all over the United States are preparing for the day, but here the picture is slightly different. The year is 1939, Irene has been a widow for less than a month, and she is going back to work as a teacher in a one room school to support her family. Her five year old son is not ready to start school yet, but he will go along with his mother because there is nowhere else for him to stay.1 The story of this amazing woman is the story of my great-grandmother, Irene Helmich.
The story actually started when a little baby girl was born to Henry and Lizzie Schnarre on June 10, 1896 in Warren County, Missouri. She was the first of their eight children, and they named her Irene. As she grew up, she attended a small one room school called Liberty Grove. Her family lived close to the school, and often, the teacher would board with them. One of these was Miss Walton, and Irene really liked her.2 Maybe it was while getting to know this teacher quite well that Irene first thought of becoming a teacher herself.
In 1910 Irene finished school at Liberty Grove and began to attend classes at Central Wesleyan Academy in Warrenton, Missouri. Education was very important to her family, and her parents made it possible for all of their children to attend Central Wesleyan.3 It was a twenty mile all day trip to the school, so Irene boarded in Warrenton. She only went home about once a month. By supplying firewood for the school, her father was able to pay for part of her tuition.4 Irene graduated from Central Wesleyan Academy in 1915, two years before they would start their professional teacher education program.5 Like prospective teachers across the nation she had only the equivalent of a high school education.6 After passing a test given by the county superintendent, she was certified to teach first through eighth grade.7
With this preparation, Irene started teaching at Maple Dale School in the fall of 1915. The school was fairly close to home, so she lived at home and walked each day. The distance to the school was made shorter by cutting through fields and woods rather than following the roads. 8 At this school she received a salary of approximately forty-five dollars a month. 9 In 1917 she began teaching at Blattner School. While teaching there, she paid approximately twelve dollars a month to board with the Bob Schmidt family. Her landlady would prepare a large lunch for her each day. There was often so much food that she could not eat all of it, but rather than hurt her landlady's 
feelings, she would throw some of the leftovers away.10 It was during this same year that the United States entered World War I. Irene probably used the United States' involvement as an opportunity to promote interest in patriotism and world geography among her students.11 After teaching at Blattner School for two years, Irene taught at a school called Tuque Prairie for one year. Once again she lived at home and walked to the school each day. Then in 1920 she started teaching at Richmond School in Defiance, Missouri and boarded with the Bueneman family. 12 In 1922 her salary was eighty-five dollars a month, almost double the salary of her first year. 13
Often, at the end of the year, the students would present a program for the community. These programs included plays and recitations of poems by students. Programs may have also been planned to accompany the box or pie social.14 These socials helped the school raise money for books or other necessary supplies. All the women would make a dinner or pie and package it into a decorated box. Then without revealing the name of the cook, the boxes were auctioned off to the men. The women then ate dinner with whoever bought their box. Sometimes, if it was well known that a man hoped to buy a certain woman's box so that he could eat dinner with her, others would bid against him just to raise the price.15 Other special events included spelling bees and arithmetic matches that helped the students practice there skills and show pride in their abilities. Sometimes there would be basket dinners where everyone brought food for a potluck meal. Afterwards people played fiddles or guitars for a dance. 16 These special activities were looked forward to by the students and the people of the community.
On August 14, 1923 Irene Schnarre married a house painter named Emil Helmich. 
Yet, she continued to teach until 1925. This was very unusual; most teachers stopped teaching when they got married.17 Their first daughter, Emily, was born on February 26, 1926. For several years Irene did not teach; instead, she stayed home to care for their growing family. Carol Marie was born on August 28, 1927; Gwendolyn was born on April 2, 1931; and finally, a boy, Herman, joined the family on March 13, 1934.18
In 1936 Irene began teaching again at Bacon School in Defiance, Missouri. While teaching at this school, Irene had several interesting experiences. One of them included several seventh and eighth grade boys in her classes that were foster children. At first they caused some problems, but Irene kept control of her class, even when it meant using a switch on one of the boys. After that they were afraid of her and did their work. Corporal punishment was accepted in rural school, although it was only to be used as a last resort.19 Later some of the boys ran away and were expelled from the school by the directors. Irene was not happy about this because she believed it would have been better for them to stay in school.20 The teacher often joined the children in playing games
during recreational periods. This allowed her to supervise their play and make sure that everyone was included.21 Once Irene competed in a race against some of her students. She was about forty-years old at the time, but she refused to be beaten and won the race. During cold weather students may have played in the snow or gone sledding.
Emil was sick during this time and could not work, so it was up to her to support the family. This was during the Depression and her salary was down to only sixty-five dollars a month. 22 The next year Emil was so ill that Irene had to stay home to care for him. He died of a congenital heart condition on August 7, 1939.23 Within a month after his death Irene had learned to drive and was teaching again at Cappeln School. Not only did she have to prepare for each school day's lessons, but she was also alone to raise four children, take care of their cows and chickens, and make sure that all of the farm work was completed. During the summer, she also planted a large garden that had to be tended, and all of the vegetables had to be canned and preserved for the winter.24 It was at this same time that she took her five year old son Herman to school with her. This did not cause any problems, in fact he was somewhat spoiled by some of the older students.25 The next year he was old enough to start school himself. However, he did not want to quit going with his mother to attend Femme Osage School. Once in a while he caused so much trouble in the morning that Irene would let him skip school to go with her.26
Teaching a one room school required a great deal of planning. Often the school day would begin with general exercises. These provided the teacher with a valuable opportunity to present topics of interest that would not be covered in regular classes. The included topics would be interesting yet practical, such as agriculture, nature study, civics, current events, the humane treatment of animals, hygiene, and sanitation.27 On one winter day Irene was talking about health and hygiene and said that the students should take a bath at least once a week. One of her students spoke up to say that he could not take a bath in the winter because he wore long underwear throughout the cold weather.28 The general exercise time was also used to learn songs and memory selections. After the general exercises each class would have recitation and work periods. The recitation period was meant to teach, drill, and test students.29 These lessons included reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, history, geography, and natural sciences with some variation depending on the school.30 The learning of practical knowledge was also stressed. Teachers taught classes about sewing and cooking along with thrift and savings. Publications for teachers even included stories and plays for teaching topics such as thrift.31 In one room schools teachers had to find many ways of using their time efficiently so that they had time for every class. Irene used the common practice of combining classes such as fifth and sixth grades and seventh and eighth grades. The course work would then alternate with fifth and seventh grade material taught one year and sixth and eighth grade material taught the next. 32 This method worked well in rural one room schools because by the time they reached this level students had a general knowledge of the subjects so that the order of material was less important, it allowed for larger classes, and more time could be spent with each class.33 Another way in which the teacher could make sure she had time for each class was by having older students act as teaching assistants for lower grades. After introducing a new lesson she could move on to the next class and let the some of the older students help the younger children with their questions. This not only helped the teacher be more efficient, but it also reinforced the lessons which older students had already learned and it gave younger students one-on-one attention.34
Although Irene began teaching right after high school, she continued her education through summer classes at Central Wesleyan College. She also took a classes at the University of Missouri - Columbia and Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg in later years. At that time teachers could get a lifetime teaching certificate by completing sixty credit hours of college coursework. By the time she was able to reach this level, several years later, the requirement had been raised. However, she was able to continue teaching because of a grandfather clause. She finally achieved approximately ninety hours of college credit and almost reached the student teaching level. However, she thought that was a strange idea after teaching for so many years herself. She took many types of classes including Vegetable Crops, Composition and Rhetoric, and music classes.35
Another change occurred in every American's life when the United States joined World War II in December of 1941.36 Even the school children were involved in the war effort by collecting milk weed pods.37 The inside of these pods was used to make life jackets.38 In 1942 the rationing program was started. It was designed to control the amount of specific products each consumer could buy because of wartime scarcity. These products included automobiles, tires, rubber footwear, leather shoes, gasoline, meat, processed foods, coffee, and sugar. In order to buy these products, the person had to have ration stamps.39 Irene helped register people for their books of 
stamps.40 The same year, Irene also moved back to teaching at Richmond School in Defiance, where she once again received a salary of eighty-five dollars a month.41 She continued to teach at Richmond for several more years with her salary increasing each year until it reached at least one hundred five dollars a month in 1945. 42 In 1951 Richmond School was closed because of the consolidation of one room schools around the Defiance area. Irene taught for one year at the one room school Elm Point in the Orchard Farm School District. The next year it became a two room school, and Irene taught the lower elementary class for one year. After that she taught at Lone Dell for one year, before starting to teach at Augusta Public Schools. She continued to teach the combined third and fourth grade class there until 1962. It was the end of the era, soon there would be only a scattering of one room schools throughout the whole United States. 43
Irene Helmich lived through many great changes in American culture and well known historic events. She taught through World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. Compared to other things that happened during this period of time, her accomplishments may seem very small, but they are very important. Her life affected the lives of many people including her students and her family.
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