November 20, 2025
contributed by Miriam Beigelmana teacher
As a budding teenager, she didn’t make much of an impression on me.
Her personality was ordinary; even uplifted and serious. Her dress was plain; she wore brown suits with starched blouses. Her appearance was also ordinary; She styled her straight brown hair into a chin-length cob that framed her face. Her hair always looked freshly cut. That was her best feature.
But as an adult, I remember Mrs. Cole fondly. She wasn’t funny or flashy or flamboyant. But she was far from ordinary.
In sixth grade, Mrs. Cole was my language arts teacher. Nothing remarkable there. We did the usual reading, writing and grammar. But our English enrichment group was an epic chapter in my teenage era.
Every Tuesday lunchtime, eight of us, boys and girls, would gather in the school auditorium down the hall from our classroom. We sat on hard metal benches around a long, rectangular brown table, telling stories like The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Mrs. Cole was in charge and made us feel at home.
She liked me. I could tell. She gave me a warm smile as she gently nudged me to share my ideas about what we had read. She had a way of bringing out the best in me. Until I joined this group, I didn’t like to share my inner world.
There was a risk of my feelings being trampled. I shared when I had to, but not too much and not too often. Mrs. Cole showed me that it could be safe to share that my feelings would be treated with tenderness.
In our group, I slowly learned to bring my thoughts and feelings together and share them without hesitation. I learned to trust my timid voice. Following Mrs. Cole’s example, we valued and validated each other’s opinions. We didn’t always agree with each other, but neither boy or girl mocked the other’s musings.
Daniel, the class clown, was also in our group. In our regular class he relied on his silly antics to make himself feel noticed, but in our special reading group he didn’t crack a single joke. He must have felt as safe in our intimate club as I did.
I didn’t appreciate the gift I was given then. It was before I knew anything about introverts and extroverts (and ambiverts). It would be years before I realized I thrived in smaller environments.
Maybe my teachers saw that in me and recommended that I join the Tuesday reading group. Or maybe I was just a good reader. I didn’t even know that about myself.
I had little self-awareness back then. I guess that’s age-appropriate for a twelve-year-old. How I wish I knew then what I know now – Wisdom is wasted on the young. For better or worse, life’s adversities have forged me with a lot of wisdom and self-awareness.
Mrs. Cole tickled my prefrontal cortex. She gave me a try at the analysis, first of the storybook characters, then an analysis of my own character. And I’ve been analyzing ever since.
I was looking for Mrs. Cole. I couldn’t find her on Facebook, and when I googled her name, at least ten other women with the same name came up. Many happened to be English teachers.
Some had profile pictures, but I didn’t recognize them mine Mrs. Cole in each. I finally came across a picture of a woman who looked like her.
What the hell? I’ll email her and see if she taught me sixth grade.
A few hours later I got an email: “Good evening! I’m afraid I’m not Mrs. Cole. That’s a common name. Good luck finding your former teacher.”
At least I connected with some Ms. Cole there. It gave me hope that if I kept looking, I would find Mrs. Cole, my far from ordinary English teacher.
