My Dearest Mrs. Simpkins

When I share the story of how I began to write I always start with my High School English class. My teacher, Mrs. Simpkins, baptized my imagination through her words, the authors she had us dive in to, the assignments she handed out and the excellence she demanded from her students. Unfortunately, I dealt with grammar and sentence structure like I would deal with a pack of rapid spider monkeys. I avoided the mechanics of writing with creative gusto. I shunned the English language.

One of my only regrets in life was not learning the art of writing from Mrs. Simpkins. But  I did pick up the spirit of writing a good story from her class and for that I am indebted to her. Its taken me years (and many a patient editor) to teach me to write with proper grammar. Every time I put paper to pen (or fingers to keyboard) I harken back to that class. More sunk in then I realized.

Recently, I found Mrs. Simpkins.  She lives just three miles away. I contacted her and let her know what she meant to my life. Yesterday, I delivered the two award winning books I wrote and the following letter. Enjoy the letter and think about tracking down one of your old mentors to express to them the impact they made on your life.

My Dearest Mrs. Simpkins,

I don’t know if you’ll remember me but I was in your English class in 1986. The class was required. As a senior ready to escape the monochrome world of High School, I knew I had to endure it to walk the graduation stage.

What I did not realize at the time was the impact you’d have on my life and the intellectual doors your class opened in my mind.

Three of my best friends were in class with me. That did not bode well for you. You may remember the time we passed a note under the back wall to the honors English class.  We demanded their immediate surrender to our less intellectual but scrappier English IV class. You weren’t very happy when the whole honors class, including the teacher, came marching in with their hands above their heads.  They lined up against the wall as their teacher handed you our declaration of war, along with a white flag and a signed note of surrender. There were a few of these incidents that caused you to feign irritation but we knew it really endeared us to you.

As a high school senior, I labored hard to avoid work. Unfortunately your class demanded a bit of intellectual prowess. Reading l novels was fine but testing over them seemed redundant. Grammar haunted me like a angry poltergeist. And research papers were torture akin to intellectual waterboarding. Learning to be a better writer seemed a complete waste of time. But you were steadfast in your insistence of the beauty of the language, the depth of literature throughout history and the significance of clear, thoughtfully written communication.

Mrs. Simpkins, you were the first person to open my heart to the wondrous wordplay of Shakespeare. I cried reading Romeo and Juliet.  I was on fire as I absorbed  the assignment to memorize Hamlet’s Soliloquy for class. George Orwell was both disturbing and poignant, stoking lively debate amongst the class. But the moment that drew deep gold from my heart was the week we spent carefully dissecting William Blake’s The Tyger and The Lamb. During those few classes (and how I longed for them to extend) I partook of delight.   It was as if God used the words of Blake as a way tounmask His presence.

I had come to faith just a few months prior and I hungered for truth like a dying man longing for water in the Sahara. Blake’s poems tapped into a dormant longing for beauty awakening an intellectual hunger never since quenched. That was the week that fated my continual pursuit of philosophy, theology, poetry and literature.

As we dove into Blake you began to explain his poetry from a spiritual perspective. Your words inspired me to not only seek God with my heart but to give Him my mind. The genuine faith you spoke of and lived was a quiet witness that helped in the foundation of my new realized faith.

Unfortunately, I did not try to absorb your lessons on the English language (especially my arch-enemy grammar). 

By the time I graduated college, I began to write for fun.  I had to relearn, over the next ten years, what I could have mastered in your class as an eighteen year old.  I have been haunted by your lessons every time I’ve written since then.

Now as a 43-year-old man, I have written two award-winning books (thank God for editors). I might have never written those books nor discovered a love of writing had you not sown seeds into my life twenty-five years ago. You didn’t just open a door.  You knocked it off its hinges.  Many more books wait to be written. I now regularly write at least an hour or two a day, trying to improve my craft; longing to tell stories worth telling.

I knew I had to write you to let you know who you have been in my life. I imagine much of your job was thankless. Hundreds of students came under your tutelage throughout your career.  I can’t speak for any of them. But I can say you changed my life.

Thank you for pursuing your call. Thank you for loving God. Thank you for loving students. And thank you for your years of education.

Shawn Small

Tagged as: English, high school, Shawn Small, teacher