Heads of the Class : Today’s Assignment: Celebrate ‘Day of the Teacher’

For the past three weeks, Thelma Simpson has been hobbling around her 28 first-graders on a broken foot. But her frantic pace hasn’t missed a beat.

In her classroom at Turtle Rock Elementary School in the Irvine Unified School District, Simpson scoots from one student to another. One moment she is hugging a 6-year-old frustrated over being unable to spell squirrel , and the next she is bending herself into a “teapot” during class exercises.

“There’s never a boring day when you teach,” Simpson said Tuesday as she wiped a pen mark from a student’s face. “They have all these little surprises and great personalities. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

While hobbling around on a broken foot amid a roomful of 6-year-olds may seem above and beyond the call of duty, it’s just part of the job as far as Simpson is concerned. To thank teachers such as Simpson for that kind of dedication and caring, state school officials have declared today “Day of the Teacher.”

In Orange County, special activities in appreciation of teachers are planned in many school districts.

In Santa Ana schools, administrators will serve as classroom volunteers. In Garden Grove, parents and students are sponsoring buffet lunches and special assemblies, and plan to write notes of appreciation to their teachers.

Ann Kaganoff, an academic coordinator at UC Irvine’s department of education, said the special day is well-deserved.

“It’s so difficult to be a teacher nowadays,” she said. “Teaching is tough with all the change that is going on in the world. Teachers need to have a good understanding of themselves and a strong self-identity. You can’t understand children if you don’t understand yourself.”

For Simpson, 54, who has been an instructor for 25 years, teaching has come easy--even with her limp during the past three weeks. She broke her foot when she stepped down awkwardly from her desk after removing art decorations in her classroom. Rather than take a day off from school, she strolled in with a heavily bandaged foot.

“I hate missing a day,” Simpson said. “It makes me feel like I’m missing out on something.”

Sometimes the work is difficult, Simpson admits. But often, the rewards are greater.

In September, for example, one of Simpson’s former students reintroduced herself outside the Turtle Rock campus. The former student, now a parent of twins attending the school, tapped her on the shoulder and said, “You are my Mrs. Simpson.”

And after all these years of teaching, Simpson said watching a child learn the ABCs is still a wonderful experience.

“I still get goose bumps when I hear a child read,” Simpson said. “In the beginning of the year, we have children who have never read before. By the end of the school year, they are reading. It makes me feel very much like a teacher.”

For teaching kids to read and all of her other efforts, Simpson has been named teacher of the year at Turtle Rock. And while her students are proud of that accomplishment, she said it’s just as noteworthy to them that she shares the surname of their hero, Bart Simpson, television’s most popular cartoon underachiever. One fifth-grader teased Simpson and told her she had taught so long that television producers decided to name a cartoon after her.

“I got a kick out of that,” Simpson said. “At least they won’t ever forget my name, even when they become 80 years old.