Helen A. Cooper, a retired Baltimore teacher, died Saturday of heart failure in a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. She was 79 and lived in the Hopkins House Apartments.

Services for Mrs. Cooper were being held today at the Levinson funeral establishment, 6010 Reisterstown Road.

She had been visiting a daughter in Nairobi for three months and had been a volunteer teacher in an adult-literacy course there.

She retired 12 years ago as a reading specialist at Robert Poole Junior High School, after teaching there and at Garrison Junior High School for more than 15 years. During the late 1950s, she taught at the Bais Yaakov School for Girls.

At her retirement, she established an annual award at Robert Poole for improvement in reading, and she also was financing the education of two children in Kenya. The family suggested memorial contributions to a fund to continue that support.

She is survived by a son, Stuart B. Cooper of Columbia; a daughter, Barbara R. Steenstrup of Nairobi; a sister, Sylvia Fennell of San Francisco; a daughter-in-law, Rebecca L. Besson; a son-in-law, Viggio Steenstrup; and two grandchildren.