AUBURN — At age 72, and after 42 years teaching, beloved kindergarten Sherwood Heights Elementary School teacher Lee Hearn is retiring.

She was honored Friday during a school assembly, where staff and students serenaded her with their version of “Say A Little Prayer for You,” tweaking Dionne Warwick’s lyrics to “Sing a Little Song for You.”

Hearn responded by wiping tears, hugging, then stepping to the microphone to say thank you.

Hearn first began teaching shortly after marrying her husband, Bob Hearn, 52 years ago. She taught in the Oxford area, then took time off to raise their three children. She returned to the classroom at Fairview Elementary School, where she taught for six years.

“When they built the middle school they redistricted,” Hearn said. She went to Sherwood Heights 29 years ago to teach kindergarten. She’s been there ever since.

“I absolutely love it,” Hearn said. “I love the kids, the innocence. I love the people. This has been a wonderful school. The friendships you make, working with the parents, it’s been just great,” she said as students ate lunch outside during the annual field day.

She’s retiring, Hearn said, because it’s time. “I’m 72, but I don’t feel 72. I have never considered this work. I love coming here. I wish I was 10 years younger and I could go 10 more years.”

Kindergarten is not like it used to be, Hearn said. It’s more like a strong first grade would have been 10 years ago. There’s less playing and art, more focus on reading, writing and testing.

“Once we went to all-day kindergarten it’s been very different,” she said. “This is the way the world is going. I don’t think children are having time to develop the social skills, the emotional skills.”

The hardest part of her job, she said, is seeing children come to school “with so many problems you are almost helpless to do anything about. You do the very best you can, but it’s really hard seeing the children and what they’re facing at home. Yet we expect them to read and write and do all this.”

But, she said, that’s been eased with more school counselors who weren’t there in her early years. “There is help,” she said.

Parent Katie Brooks said her daughter had Mrs. Hearn two years ago.

“She was phenomenal,” Brooks said. “I saw amazing growth when McKenzie was in her class. She had struggles early on. She went from being taken out of the class all the time for behavioral problems to excelling.”

McKenzie, 8, called Mrs. Hearn “very nice and awesome.”

When word of Hearn’s retirement spread, the school community decided to create 42 days of honoring her with some act, one for each year she taught.

One day maintenance staff planted flowers in the shape of a 42. Kitchen staff made a gingerbread man, paying tribute to Hearn’s tradition of reading and acting out the story with students. Someone planted a maple tree outside her class, remembering how Hearn and her husband make maple syrup. At a recent retirement party, the decoration theme was camping because the Hearns love camping.

“Today is my turn,” fourth-grade teacher Christine Samson said during the assembly. Samson is also Hearn’s daughter. Samson’s tribute was introducing a new award to be given to two deserving sixth-graders each year.

The “Lee Hearn Character Counts” award will go to students who exemplify the school’s core values of fairness, kindness, compassion and respect. The plaque, shaped as a gingerbread man, will hang in the library. This year the award went to Alexis Bellefleur and Koby Humuson-Fulgham.

During the assembly Rhaina Chabot, 25, stopped by to tell Hearn she just got a job at Crisis and Counseling. “Isn’t she beautiful!” the teacher gushed as the two hugged. Chabot had Hearn for kindergarten 20 years ago.

“This fall is going to be tough,” Hearn said.

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