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Urbana High School art teacher Leigh Ann Simpson will be featured in STRS Ohio’s Reflections Series to help Ohio’s more than 500,000 active, inactive and retired public educators better connect with the benefits offered by their pension plan.

Videos highlighting Simpson’s life and career will roll out to thousands of STRS Ohio social media followers and website visitors starting Wednesday, March 22.

In addition, most public educators will receive an email linking to videos of Simpson discussing her career as a teacher and artist specializing in landscapes of farms across her beloved Champaign County.

Simpson comes from a teaching family – her dad and great aunt were educators. So were her late husband and two in-laws, and so is her stepdaughter.

She says the decision to teach art was an easy one.

“When I started, I thought I wanted to be an art teacher, because I loved art so much. Which I do, but then even in my very first year I realized I love the students … it’s really the students that I was connecting with and art’s the way to connect to them,” she said.

Throughout her 20-year teaching career, Simpson has encouraged young people to become educators. She manages a fund offering a scholarship to an Urbana High School graduate entering the field of education.

“We want to encourage the best and the brightest to become the next generation of teachers,” she said.

Beginning Wednesday, March 22, anyone can see the videos spotlighting Simpson by visiting the STRS Ohio website or STRS Ohio’s pages on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Submitted by the STRS

Submitted by the STRS