GOSHEN -- Beulah Gonzalez is addicted to working with children.

That's the explanation the 86-year-old Argentine woman gives for why, 26 years after "retirement," she still volunteers all day, every day in a kindergarten classroom at Chandler Elementary School.

Known as "Abuelita" -- an affectionate word for "grandma" in Spanish -- to kindergartners in Room 115, Gonzalez has worked in schools -- paid or unpaid -- since 1944. She says she's not ready for true retirement yet, because she doesn't know how she'd fill her days other than by knitting and reading.

"I enjoy reading, but you can just read so many hours a day," she said.

Gonzalez immigrated to the U.S. to attend Goshen College almost 70 years ago. She was originally licensed to teach high school, and she took her first teaching job during World War II. She said teachers were spread thin because so many of the male teachers had been drafted, and she stayed up through the early morning every day grading papers because she had to teach so many classes.

On top of that, she said, most of the male students weren't interested in school because they knew they could be drafted any day.

She knew she didn't want to teach high school anymore, so when she was offered a chance to start a school in the mountains of Puerto Rico, she took it.

Gonzalez spent three years getting the school on firm standing. When she left in 1951, it only taught first and second grade. Now, she said, it has grown to teach all the way up to ninth grade.

She and her husband -- whom she met in Puerto Rico -- moved back to northern Indiana. After that, she earned an elementary education license from Goshen College, worked in a small county school, taught in a children's home in Fort Wayne and worked in some public schools in Fort Wayne. Even though she retired in 1983, she didn't stop teaching.

"I decided that I wasn't ready to leave the classroom, so I offered my services as a substitute," Gonzalez said.

She's worked as a substitute teacher in northern Indiana, Virginia, Florida and Colorado and as an assistant in the kindergarten rooms at Chandler.

She said she left teaching "for good" in 2000 -- a statement that made Chandler principal Lisa Lederach laugh -- but Gonzalez came back to Chandler this year to volunteer from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. every day.

When the school had parent-teacher conferences, she was there until 7:30 p.m. Gonzalez said many of the teachers that worked at Chandler nine years ago when she was an assistant are still here.

"They were so glad to know she was coming back," Lederach said.

As a volunteer, Gonzalez said she gives one-on-one time with the students who need it, particularly students whose first language is Spanish. She said sometimes, children need to hear the instructions in their native language, and she helps emphasize behavior and routines.

Gonzalez gets up early twice a week to go swimming and then comes in to volunteer until the end of the school day.

And then?

"I go home and collapse," Gonzalez said.