WA Hall of Fame honor for Tri-Cities music teacher who taught thousands
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- Phillip Simpson inducted into WMEA Hall of Fame for decades teaching.
- Simpson taught a few thousand since 1984 and many became teachers.
- Retired but active: substitutes, conducts and performs with regional ensembles.
The auditorium at Chief Joseph Middle School came alive with music Monday morning as its 7th grade jazz band rehearsed for an upcoming music festival.
The bass grooved, trumpets wailed and saxophones crooned as substitute teacher Phillip Simpson took the band through its repertoire of songs including “El Gato Gordo” and “Blues Machine.”
“Don’t slow down,” he cautioned a section, clapping his hands like a metronome to get the students through the first couple of bars.
Simpson, 63, has been retired as a music educator for a couple of years now. But even after capping a four-decade career, he still refuses to hang up the baton.
In fact, the Tri-City educator’s phone keeps ringing.
“I think there’s not a whole lot of music substitute teachers out there,” he told the Tri-City Herald. “I told the substitute people in each district, ‘Don’t put me on the list, but if a music teacher calls and asks for me by name, then sure, I’ll go help them out.”
It’s that dedication to teaching the next generation of artists and musicians — and helping out current music educators — that has landed him a spot in the Washington Music Educators Association’s (WMEA) Hall of Fame.
He was recognized and inducted at the organization’s annual conference last month.
Simpson — a soft-spoken giant in the Tri-Cities arts community — said he was “honored” and “very humbled.”
“You go through your career just doing what you signed up to do, and I never expected any recognition. I just did what I was supposed to be doing,” he said.
Simpson started his career in the Highland School District in 1984. Since then, he’s taught at least a few thousand students, he estimates, about 20 of whom went on to become music educators themselves.
One of them, Sarah Berglund, who teaches orchestra at Carmichael Middle School and Richland High School, nominated Simpson for the hall of fame induction. She’s a prior WMEA Teacher of the Year winner.
Kevin Swisher, band teacher at Chief Joseph, received two years of private trumpet lessons from Simpson back in middle school.
He was eager to be a pupil of Simpson’s at Pasco High School, but was disappointed when he left to teach at Southridge High School.
Swisher said Simpson is a cut above the rest because he hasn’t stopped playing professionally during his teaching career. The feedback he gives to students at festivals and events is inspiring, he said.
“It really speaks to his ability to continue teaching for so many years. It’s really rare in our industry, it takes so many extra hours to be a band teacher,” Swisher said.
“The thing that sticks out to me, besides his youthful character, is that he’s always very positive,” he continued. “He’s always so positive with the students, and the way he delivers positive reinforcement in the classroom continuously, repetitiously is really cool.”
Southridge music teacher Joshua Lindberg also credited Simpson as a key influence in his decision to pursue music education.
Apple orchard roots
Simpson’s musical roots stem from his youth in Milton-Freewater, Ore., growing up on the family’s apple orchard.
Early mornings and long days on the farm instilled a “good work ethic,” he said.
Simpson started with the guitar at 7 years old. By 10, he was playing trumpet in the school’s fifth-grade band. He remembers the first song he played at a concert: “Merry Widow Waltz.”
He earned his bachelor’s in 1984 from Pacific Lutheran University near Tacoma, and his master’s in 1999 from Southern Oregon University
He worked five years in the Highland School District before coming to the Tri-Cities to work at Pasco High in 1989.
Simpson left the Bulldogs in 1996 to work at Southridge for nearly 25 years until 2020.
He spent the last four years of his career teaching Sage Crest Elementary School.
“It was fun because I got to go in and play my guitar, and sing goofy songs to the kids,” he said. “(I got) a lot of enthusiasm from the young kids. They seemed to buy in to what I was selling them.”
The multi-instrumentalist, who is married to singer and longtime teacher Carissa Simpson, is also known for going the extra mile for students.
In 2020, after a MP3 recording of Woody Guthrie’s anthem, “This Land is Your Land,” wasn’t working in the curriculum, he recorded a video of his own rendition.
He sang, played the banjo, guitar, ukulele and bass in the video, which was later posted to Kennewick School District’s Facebook page and drew hundreds of likes and comments.
Simpson said it was “a good career” that he always had fun doing, especially with the amount of talent that came through his classroom doors.
Though officially retired, Simpson is making sure his talents aren’t rusting away.
In addition to substitute teaching, he conducts weekly with the Columbia Basin Concert Band and Inland Northwest Orchestra in Pendleton.
He also plays trumpet, tuba and bass in a number of regional bands, including Swing Unlimited and Les Stress & The Testers.
