End of an Era: Longtime HTHS teacher retires

One of Hewitt-Trussville High School’s most beloved teachers won’t be returning to the classroom this fall.

Simona Herring has taught speech and English there for the past 34 years and has worked in education for 45 years. She was the oldest teacher at Hewitt, she pointed out with a laugh.

“At some point, you have to go,” Herring said. “I was thinking, do I want to go out walking, or am I going to be in a wheelchair or on life support?”

Herring still remembers the first class she taught. It was at Rutledge Middle School, and she said she remembers being nervous but excited. During her four-plus decades of teaching, Herring said she constantly evolved her teaching style.

“When I first started teaching, they gave me my curriculum book, and I was trying to do everything by the book,” she said. “But over the years, I found that it’s not just the curriculum that’s important. It’s other life lessons, and those are not given to you in a book.”

She tried to teach her students how to feel good about themselves and how to accept each other. People would open up about real-life problems in her class.

“We didn’t use the books hardly at all — it was hands-on,” she said. “You’re going to get up, and you’re going to talk, and you’re going to say how you feel and how you think.”

Students within each class would become really close, and Herring said it was almost like a family. Her class was a safe place — it was like magic, she said. Students would cry, and Herring would cry, too. She always kept boxes of tissues in stock for everyone to wipe away the tears.

From day one, Herring made sure her students understood that what they heard inc lass stayed in that classroom. Herring said she’ll never forget how one student walked out crying, and her boyfriend was waiting by the door and asked what was wrong. “It was just sad in there today,” she told him. He asked her what happened as they were walking off, and Herring heard the student say, “I can’t tell you.”

“I have to make sure kids know that this is a safe place, and this class will only be as good as you allow it to be. If you run out in the halls telling people’s business and what they said, no one’s going to open up,” Herring said.

One of Herring’s classroom inventions was Ask It Basket, an idea Herring got 20 years ago from a student who came to her about his parents’ divorce. The student had to choose which parent he wanted to live with, and he went to Herring for advice.

But Herring didn’t go through that in her lifetime, and she didn’t know what the best advice would be. Herring knew other students in the class probably had gone through similar situations, but the student said he didn’t want other students to know what he was going through. So, Ask It Basket was born.

Students would write down questions they wanted answered or situations for which they needed advice. They didn’t sign their names, and students never asked who wrote each question. Then they would sit in a circle in class, and Herring would read the question. Whoever wanted to speak could speak, but no one was forced to say anything.

“It was just a wonderful way for people to get information about things they were wondering without feeling like everyone would know it was them asking that question,” she said.

Many students throughout the years have stayed in touch with Herring long past graduation. One of those students is Clayne Crawford, who graduated from Hewitt-Trussville in 1996. He then debuted his acting career by playing Dean in the 2002 film “A Walk To Remember,” followed by a role playing Martin Riggs in the TV show “Lethal Weapon.” He said he remembers how Herring took him under her wing in high school and encouraged him to get into acting.

“I played sports, so the last thing I wanted to do was be in the drama department,” he said. “She found a way to incorporate improvisation into one of her classes. She said, ‘When you’re debating a topic, it’s not going to be something that’s true to your heart, so you’re going to be acting sometimes.’”

She gave Crawford a topic and a position to defend in a debate, and Crawford said it was the first time he acted.

“Something clicked inside of me, and everyday after that, she would tell me I’ve got to pack up my bags and move to Los Angeles,” he said.

Johnny Amari took Herring’s class in ’98 and is now the public defender for Trussville. Amari always thought he wanted to go to Auburn University and study engineering, but it was Herring’s speech class that sparked his desire to become a lawyer. He said he remembered how Herring always gave attention to the students who needed it.

“She was never shy to engage with what I would call at-risk kids or more difficult kids,” he said. “And they respected her for it. There was one kid in my class who wasn’t a go-getter, and he did the bare minimum to get by. But for some reason, he did whatever Mrs. Herring told him to do.

“She had a really good way of making you feel like she had respect for you and was treating you like an adult. And that respect she gave her students, she earned that same respect back.”

In Herring’s retirement, she said she plans to do some free tutoring for veterans pursuing their GED and other volunteering. She’ll miss being with her students the most, she said.

“When my husband died four years ago... I took off several weeks from school, and I was really nervous to go back,” she said. “The day I went back, I was so scared. But the kids were wonderful. They embraced me emotionally and physically, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I can begin to heal.’

“It’s never been just a job to me. It’s been my life.”