Mrs. Zimmerman

I was not a very good student in High School. I am neither proud nor ashamed of this, it is simply a fact. I made good grades (I graduated “with honors”) but I really didn’t push myself as hard as I could have. Mostly, however arrogant it might sound, I was bored. Mostly, however foolish it might sound now, I was itching to be done with school and childhood and get to the promised land of adulthood. Being a grownup, I found, was okay but not nearly as magical as it seemed when I wasn’t one…but that’s the way of things when we are young and running too fast to not be young.

My High School (dear old Alexander Hamilton High in a western corner of Los Angeles) was culturally diverse…blacks and whites in abundance with a good number of children of Latin and Asian descent making the school a racial stewpot; a good percentage of the white kids were Jewish as we were reminded anytime a Jewish holiday coincided with a school day (lots of filmstrips and independent reading time on those days because so many of our classmates were away and teachers didn’t want to go over the same material twice)…but full of the same schoolyard politics (cliques and gossip and the like) as any other school.

I found all of that political stuff tedious beyond words and I ignored it as much as I could. I sought out isolated corners of the sprawling campus to read and be to myself but I rarely had them to myself as a stalwart circle of friends…social outcasts, by choice or by happenstance, like myself…gathered and we created an inclusive clique all our own.

Our principal…a diminutive silver haired, eagle eyed woman named Mrs. Jimenez…ruled Hamilton with an iron fist in a velvet glove, easily alternating between nurturing grandmother and unrelenting tyrant as required.

I did the homework for one class while half-listening to teachers talking in another class so that I didn’t have to lug books on the half-hour walk from the school to my house any more than I had to.

I had a small circle of loyal friends (a state of being that continues to this day) and secret crushes that are part and parcel of the existence of a teenaged boy (I think Gina knew that I was smitten with her but I don’t think she ever took me seriously.)

And I had Mrs. Zimmerman. I was blessed to be taught by several motivated and motivating teachers in my school days…Mrs. Levy in the 3^rd grade, Mr. Daniels in the 5^th grade, Mr. McIntosh in the 6^th grade, Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Allen in Junior High, and Mrs. Zimmerman. Mrs. Zimmerman was an English teacher and she kind of took me under her wing and taught much about the one thing that did really engage me back then…that being writing, of course.

I ended up taking 5 or 6 classes with Mrs. Zimmerman over the course of my 3 years at Hamilton and she always challenged me to dig deeper, strive harder, to put my reality into the things I wrote. More than any other teacher I ever had I gave my all to reach for the bar that she kept raising higher…and I loved her for that.

I never told her that, of course…teenaged boys don’t have the words to tell teachers how much they appreciate making them reach for the fullest potential they can…but I hope that she knew it somehow just the same.