Teachers of Influence

The Journal Sentinel ran a column by Pulitzer Prize winning writer Kathleen Parker (2010 for Commentary) in yesterday's paper in which she talked about an influential high school teacher. As I'm sure is the case for many writers, Parker had an English teacher who helped her recognize her talent.

Maybe it was the era when I was in school, back in the 60s, but I never got lucky and landed an influential English teacher. Don't get me wrong, English was always my best subject and my teachers liked having me in class. I still have a creative writing piece tucked away somewhere, graded "A+++++", that I wrote for freshman English. But nobody took me aside and said, "This is your destiny!" even though being a writer was all I really wanted to be from the time I was 10.

I went to college planning on being a writer, only to have a terrible experience in my first creative writing course. The "B" I got in that class was as clear a message as any that I wasn't writer material.

It wasn't until a few years after I graduated that I even thought about writing again. My husband and I attended a school in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and I took a writing course for fun. The teacher was an aged, retired editor from True Confessions magazine and she loved, loved, loved everything I wrote. She told me I would be a published writer someday.

I didn't take to writing professionally until I was in my 30s, and even then I was always a bit of a dabbler. I wonder after reading Kathleen Parker's column if I might not have bloomed earlier and with more commitment if I'd only had a high school teacher of influence.