Centralia High School students and staff are getting ready to go back to school, but for the first time in 44 years, Tim Penman won’t be joining them.
“You know, you feel like it’s time to be done. That’s kind of how it was for me,” Penman said about his decision to retire at the end of the 2022-23 school year. “I thought, you know, I kind of put in the time and I kind of feel peace about doing it.”
Penman graduated from Pullman High School in 1974 and got his first job at the school in 1979. He started out serving as the school’s yearbook advisor and teaching graphic design, architecture and drafting.
“I didn’t even have a complete first year because Mount St. Helens erupted,” Penman recalled. “School closed three weeks early, so I had to complete the yearbook on my own.”
Penman changed disciplines several times over the years, including Washington state history, health classes and physical education.
“I kind of taught a lot of different areas and finally settled into science,” Penman said, adding that he was teaching a tech ed class that became a science class when state science requirements went into effect.
“Math threw me into science, and from then, I’ve stayed developing that science class,” he said.
In addition to teaching, Penman served as a coach for almost all of his 44 years at Centralia High School, including his time as the head track and field coach. He will continue to coach after retirement from teaching.
When asked if he had any takeaways from the school year leading up to his retirement this summer, Penman said, “The biggest thing for me was to be able to teach for 44 years and to do that with the people I was working with.”
He added that many of the teachers he worked with in his early years in the district have passed away.
“There’s just a whole bunch of people that I’ve worked with (who) have been really kind of a blessing to work with because they’ve just been such professional people,” Penman said. “And despite all the other things that go on, they were always right there on task trying to do what was best for the kids.”
Penman doesn’t have any set plans for his retirement, he said, but he has been keeping busy. “They said you get busier when you retire, which, yeah, it’s true,” Penman said.
