By Sarah Rabel

Elizabeth Simpson will retire at the end of the school year after a career that has taken her from the University of Washington to 24 years at Lopez School. Her breadth of experience is matched only by her spirit of generosity.

Simpson and her husband, Henning, grew to love Lopez through weekend visits while she was earning her PhD at University of Washington. When it was complete, she looked no further than this island and, as she explains, “fell into a job-share with Corinne Thwing.” This led to her teaching English 9-12 full-time; she speaks of those early years at Lopez with fondness. “Dave Anderson, the school counselor and I developed the English elective program: Ethnic Lit, Shakespeare, Film and Literature, and so on. […] There are years of marvelous books and materials in this classroom.”

That fondness remains strong as she speaks of her present colleagues and administration. “I’m very happy with this education community where people are supportive of each other. […] What my colleagues and I know to our bones is that we’re putting the kids first to help them become the best they can be. I will miss the daily contact with that kind of love.”

Looking toward retirement, Simpson speaks of her husband and their plans to finish their book: “Real Foods on the Farm.” She also speaks of a changing public school system; of onerous unfunded mandates and Lopez School’s educators rising above them with unique opportunities, such as the Farm to School program and international travel.

“Creativity used to mean you are an artist, a poet, a visionary,” Simpson says, expressing her concern with how this has changed into a focus on producing tools for technology. “Technology is a good servant but a bad master. It worries me that students will lose touch with the world’s surfaces if they spend too much time looking at a screen.”

Simpson recognizes that technology is essential to education, but she is uncomfortable with it. She laughs, “It really is time for me to retire!” But she becomes serious once more, reflecting on the school she helped shape. “What we cling to as a school is a wealth of knowledge that makes kids well-rounded individuals; we have great leadership and our level of concern for individual students is very high.”

Happily, Simpson will remain an integral part of the education community and of the farm program. With gratitude and admiration, that community acknowledges her. Secondary Principal Dave Sather observes: “Ms. Simpson’s foresight and energy were pivotal in the creation of the farm class, and her advocacy of literature as a means to explore what it means to be human will be missed.”

Lopez graduate Nate Drahn adds: “Ms. Simpson’s fierce love for language and knowledge is wildly contagious. Grammar was more than memorized rules for her; she was giving us the tools to effectively share our thoughts and passions with the world around us.”

Former Principal Roland MacNichol concludes for us all: “Elizabeth is as comfortable digging in the dirt with her students as she is leading a Socratic seminar on classical literature. Elizabeth loves her students. It is this love, and the heart she wears on her sleeve, that make her students reach beyond what they think they can do. Elizabeth is a powerful example to all.”