April 17, Fourth Sunday of Easter: Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

For more than 30 years, Judith Askins taught ninth-grade English. Known for her many idiosyncrasies, Ms. Askins lugged cardboard boxes full of our student papers home in the afternoons and returned the papers, marked in red, the next day. Perhaps all the late-night grading explains why she consumed coffee like water, routinely drinking her fourth or fifth cup of the day during second period.

When the bell rang, Ms. Askins’s quirks emerged full force: she recited Shakespeare in a southern accent, diagrammed sentences with surgical precision, and lectured without making eye contact with anyone. As she sang of synesthesia and simile, she set her gaze not on her students’ faces but somewhere above our heads. My classmates and I joked that she was teaching to the clouds—to some unattainable height beyond our reach.

It was a good metaphor for her philosophy of education. Ms. Askins perceived in us potential we could not imagine, and she refused to settle for less. While getting an A from her proved nearly impossible, getting an F was even harder. Failure was not an option; nor was resting on our laurels. “Rewrite it,” she would kindly insist. And so we would, revising our theses and correcting grammatical gaffes again and again. I once begged for a C on a paper so that I could be relieved of the task of rewriting it a third time. “Vivid verbs, Miss Crenshaw,” Ms. Askins replied, glancing over her half-rimmed glasses (and over my head) while ignoring my plea. “Rewrite it, and dazzle me with vivid verbs.”