HOMETOWN

Amid some recent decluttering — well, to be honest, plain old rummaging through the contents of a castaway cardboard box obtained from the ABC store that had sat for years in the closet of my childhood home — I found a letter to my mother from my first-grade teacher at East Southern Pines Elementary, Alice Caddell.

“It has been a joy to teach Bill this year,” Mrs. Caddell wrote. “He is a very intelligent boy, and I am expecting great things from him. Bill has been so good to share his books and toys with us. We do appreciate it. I shall miss Bill next year.”

Two thoughts immediately came to mind upon reading the handwritten message:

1). The dusting powder Mom gave Mrs. Caddell at the end of the 1965-66 school year must have been of the highest quality.

2). I peaked way too soon.

Clearly — and thank goodness — Mrs. Caddell never compared notes with math teachers I had further down the line when the work was more complicated than adding and subtracting the wobbly numbers I’d formed with a thick pencil on wide-ruled paper. My score on the math portion of the SAT was the equivalent of getting blown out 56-7 on a Saturday afternoon in September. If she had seen that, she might have reconsidered her praise for a boy who had let classmates play with his G.I. Joe and Matchbox cars.

Even if it has been a long time since you’ve been in a classroom, recollections of the good and the bad come flooding back this time of year.

You certainly recall the places where you learned. In my case, that meant nine years of elementary and middle school on the campus between New York Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue in Southern Pines, three years at Pinecrest High School, followed by four years (plus a summer session) at UNC-Chapel Hill.

What you learned? Of course, from cursive to typing, “Run, Spot, run!”  to “Emilio y Enrique están aquí.” Montpelier and Pierre were state capital challenges for those of us who grew up taking field trips to a museum or prison in Raleigh. Attempting to dissect a frog in 10th grade biology wasn’t nearly as much fun as chasing tadpoles. My world view broadened upon discovering there are bodies of water in America that make Aberdeen Lake look like a puddle.

But the people we learn from linger most vividly in memory. No one goes through a dozen or more years of school without experiencing at least a few teachers whom you’d rather forget, people ill-suited for the profession going through the motions, more eager for the last bell of the day to ring than even some of their least-motivated pupils. I had a college journalism professor who thought small, throttling my ambition — it didn’t work  —instead of feeding it.

Fortunately, those types of individuals are outnumbered by their more skilled and passionate brethren who regardless of personality possess the gift to inspire as well as instruct, whose command of a subject and enthusiasm for it rubs off. That kind of talent results in a student chasing knowledge long after a final exam in a particular course.

Since I didn’t go to kindergarten, Mrs. Caddell got me off on the right foot, and Mrs. Robbins was just as kind and good at her job in second grade. My sixth-grade teacher, Miss Hall, had a gift for making you want to learn, to show off by making excellent grades. In the ninth grade, Spanish teacher Jeanette Metcalf enthusiastically guided me through my introduction to a foreign language.

At Pinecrest, Karen Hickman (journalism) and Eloise Whitesell (English), got me off on sound footing when I was trying to learn how to string sentences together. Once I began taking courses in the School of Journalism at Carolina, Jan Johnson did a great job teaching the basics, although I’m glad none of my early newswriting efforts from J-53 are archived for anyone to see. In a couple of advanced courses I took later, professors John Adams and Richard Cole, true scholars of the craft, were demanding yet nurturing. And regardless of what level or subject someone is teaching, that is an unbeatable combination.