Date posted: June 22, 2010 - Tuesday
Title: Thinking of Teachers
Current mood: accomplished
I was looking at The Reader the other day. I had a stack of old ones lying around the house I hadn't read and thought I should finally read them and recycle the paper.
For those of you outside of the San Diego area, The Reader is what passes for an alternative press in this area. It is a weekly paper published in what is called the super tab format that runs around 150 pages a week.
As opposed to the San Diego Union Tribune which is the political mouthpiece for the establishment of the region, The Reader prints long stories told in a first-person conversational style on subjects a mainstream paper would never think of covering. The paper prints tons of music reviews, movie reviews and advertisements for everything from bust augmentation, to restaurants, to doctors, to trade schools and even, gasp, tobacco products.
When I was in college as a journalism student I had two goals for my writing. Eventually I wanted to write a piece for The Wall Street Journal; one of the "leaders" that were the long, think pieces on the outside columns of the front page. But before that I wanted to write a cover story for The Reader.
While I was reading a story I saw in The Reader I got to thinking about teachers. In particular I thought about teachers I had had and the effect they had in making me the person I am today.
The particular story that caught my eye was about a local high school track coach. Actually he had been the coach I worked for when I was in high school and one of the first people who helped me become who I am today.
I say worked for because I didn't run track for Ed Teagle, I was the "manager" of the track team. I was the guy who stood on the side with the stop watch and the record book who wrote down the race results and kept track of the relay batons.
I don't remember now how I got the job, but it helped to draw me out of my isolation and become more a part of the school life.
I may have spent my whole time in high school isolated unless Ed Teagle had drawn me out and let me see more possibilities. He had let me become part of a group and it expanded my horizons.
I eventually even tried participating in sports. I went out for the wrestling team. I didn't have much success, but it was a step forward.
So Ed Teagle was the first of the few remarkable teachers I have known over the years.
When I moved on to junior college I met the second remarkable man in my educational experience. Robert Wolfe taught Philosophy and Sociology. The Sociology course was pretty much required for liberal arts and transfer to a four-year school, but I took the Philosophy courses because of Robert Wolfe; every one offered in the catalog.
He was the first instructor to actually treat me like an adult; responsible for my own decisions for my own reasons. Most of them still thought of us like we were in high school and didn't have a mind of our own.
When I moved on to San Diego State University I met the professor who would have the greatest impact on me. Elizabeth Eileen "Betty" Chater was an English professor. She taught other courses in the department, but mainly she taught writing and composition. I took one of her courses as an undergraduate, but when I returned to SDSU from the Army and entered graduate school I took every course she offered. I even took a couple of semesters of independent study to work with her on a one-on-one basis.
And we became friends. One of the stories I wrote for her class became the first piece of fiction I had published in a national magazine.
Betty inspired me with the way she approached things. Never in great health, she still had a positive and enthusiastic outlook on life and on writing. And went out of her way to encourage me and keep me going in the direction of being a writer.
We worked together my whole time in graduate school and even after I graduated and she retired. I would visit her in Irvine where she moved after her husband died and we would catch up.
As a graduate student I also met Jim Hinkle. He was a professor in English as well. His specialty was what was called "close reading"; the investigation and interpretation of literature. He was also an expert on William Faulkner and had an office filled with rows and rows of file drawers filled with research note cards on Faulkner's work.
From Jim Hinkle's class I gained a greater sense of literature's depth and my own understanding of it. I gained confidence in my own strengths.
Some time after I had my Master's Degree I went back to junior college for a class in personal enrichment. It was a creative writing course and the instructor was LeRoy Wright.
I had known him when I was at the college before. I had taken one of his classes, but I don't remember how I did. I do remember he had a remarkable mind and I felt inadequate.
I took his class this time to get back to writing which I had somewhat abandoned while being caught up in everyday life and because the State of California said I was qualified to actually teach such a class. I also wanted to prove something to myself about how far I had come since I had been in junior college years before.
What did I want to prove? I wanted to show that I had progressed and matured as a person, as a student and as a writer. And I knew it was true when LeRoy Wright told me he wouldn't have believed I was the same person he had known before if he hadn't seen it.
So these are the teachers who helped shape me. These are the ones that took me from a shy, introverted kid through my educational experience and to where I am today. I think I am a better person and most definitely a better writer because of the things these people
