Thank You, Mr. Cole

In the book I'm currently reading, the main character, Jim Qwilleran, a journalist, credits a teacher for teaching him how to write. He says, "Fortunately I had a tenth-grade teacher who taught me how to write a thousand words about anything - or nothing...Behind her back we called her Mrs. Fish-eye, but she knew her craft, she knew how to teach! Every time I sit down at the typewriter to pound out another column, I mutter a thank-you to Mrs. Fish-eye" (Lilian Jackson Braun, The Cat Who Sang for the Birds, p. 8).

I had a tenth-grade English teacher like that. Oddly enough, he also had not one nickname, but two. And he taught me how to write.

His name was Bill Cole. He taught my sophomore English class, and I was fortunate to have him again for a class called Great Books my senior year.

At the beginning of the school year, he wore Hang Ten t-shirts and OP shorts. Everyday, a different combination of t-shirt and shorts. He told us his name was Beach Bum. Then, on Friday, Nov. 13, he suddenly showed up in long pants and a long-sleeve button-up shirt. He told us that Beach Bum had left and that he was now The Sheik of Apparel. Now he wore shirts that looked like they had come out of a 50's thrift store - stripes, zig-zags, plaids. And, again, a different one each day. Then, in the spring, timed to another Friday the 13th if possible, the Sheik left and Beach Bum reappeared. He pretty much had us convinced that he was two different people.

Not only this, he proceeded to give every student in all of his classes a nickname. He would take his time, distributing nicknames one at a time over the course of the year. Once you got a nickname, he would only call you by that name. You even had to put it on your assignments in place of your real name. He especially liked it when the students used his names to refer to each other.

His nicknames were amazingly spot-on. Julie was Cool Jul (was and still is), Anne was Classy Lassie, Andre was The First and Foremost (went on to be president of the Great Books club), Pete was Golden Boy (went on to be Valedictorian). My sister was virtually the only one to never get a nickname, because he said that she perfectly embodied the name Sarah, and he could not find a better one.

And me? I got stuck with Neat-n-Nifty. Imagine how that went over with 15-year-old me. No 15-year-old wants to be known for being neat.

This man knew how to teach writing. He divided the year into three-week sections. During the first week, he would introduce the writing assignment, whether it was a summary, description, narrative, etc. He would read examples from previous years' students that he especially enjoyed (of course, we didn't know who wrote them because they were attributed to their nickname).

He showed us how outlining your ideas before writing helped organize your thoughts and ensure you had enough support. He taught us how to use a "grabber" and a "clincher" to tie up our writing, with appropriate examples. He helped us frame the all-important thesis statement to reflect our entire paper.

The second week was devoted to writing the paper, due on Friday. He would grade the papers on the weekend. Then we all looked forward to the third week, when he would read his favorites to the class. It was an honor to have your paper read aloud, or even more, kept for future years.

He was also the first one to teach me how to diagram sentences. In my elementary-school years during the laissez-faire 70's, somehow I had never been taught basic grammar, and I really struggled with diagramming. Mr. Cole was the only teacher in high school to give me B's in English, mostly due to diagramming. But, slowly, I learned.

He taught us about the "Gross Errors": using apostrophes to show plurals, mixing up its-it's, and other grammar mistakes. To this day, I have an eagle eye for grammar and punctuation errors. I especially hate to see them in print - "How could they publish this Gross Error??"

I learned, like Qwilleran, how to write a thousand words about anything fairly quickly. This came in handy in college, when as a history major, I had many papers to write on deadlines. As an adult, writing is natural to me and something I enjoy.

So, as I begin this next phase of my blog, I am muttering a thank-you to Mr. Cole, who shaped me into the writer that I am today. Even if he did call me Neat-n-Nifty.

P.S. If you're a La Habra High School alumnus, please comment below with your nickname from Mr. Cole! And feel free to correct me if I have misremembered details from over 30 years ago. I'll be sure to change my work for accuracy.