Heineman Middle School, located at 725 Dr. John Burkey Drive, is named after one of District 158’s most influential teachers.
She attended grade school and high school in Huntley and eventually graduated and went off to college at Northern Illinois University, but finished her studies and received her degree from Rosary College in River Forest.
Her first teaching experience was back in Huntley in a one-room school house west of town and then at another east of town on the corner of Algonquin and Lakewood roads. One of her family members remembers, “Bernice hitching up the family’s horse to the buggy early every day and riding out to the school across the Heine farm in time to fire up the stove and heat the building before the children arrived.”
Once the one-room school house closed, Bernice taught in the town schools, finally at the high school, where she is most remembered in the 1953 yearbook. She taught both Latin and English. Bernice dedicated her life to her students and to her aging parents. She never married.
Our building opened its doors in the fall of 2005 and currently houses more than 800 students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade.
The Senior Class of 1953 dedicated their yearbook to her, stating “… She has been, not only to our particular class, but to all those who have gone before us, a friend, a helper, and an inspiration for good. Her smiling face and laughing words, her cheerful but respectful love of life, will always impress the hearts of those who know and love her. It is our hope and prayer that she will remain, for those who follow, just as she is – our own Miss Heineman.”
