Mrs. Potschka & The Eagle Eye, Part 2: The Trick

There’s a rainstorm today and a windstorm. I’m opting to be a recluse again today, and am working on making my habitat as close to a cocoon as possible. Today: I attack clutter. I always wondered how I could be missing the mark on having the perfect home, but this weekend I think I finally solved the endless riddle of my bedroom. Suddenly, my house has flow – starting here in my bedroom, there’s an unimpeded path leading everywhere in my home. Nothing needs to be stepped around anywhere in my apartment now, let alone in my bedroom.

But now that I find my bedroom relaxing, I’ll be writing more on more varied topics… experimental and such, I think. It’s comforting in here now. Every good writer needs a clean slate around them and now I have one.

But, speaking of “flow”… I was telling you about my Grade four and six teacher, Mrs. Potschka, not too long ago. A sturdy Scottish woman with a leg lost to polio and an “eagle” eye. Her humour made rare appearances as she was a strict and punitive teacher. She gave me the worst detention of my life, a month-long memorizing of a dreadful and uninspired poem that I wrote about here, and she passed me from grade four “on trial”. Meaning, I should have failed the grade, but thanks to my month-long stint in the hospital that year, she took pity on me.

I would have her again in grade six and she would acclaim me as the most improved student she had ever taught in her career. I would go on to win the first annual most improved student award, which was issued in the name of my fallen classmate, Sam McGladdery -- The Sam McGladdery Memorial Award. Sam was a wonderful boy who died in grade five of leukemia. I remember admiring Sam greatly. He was always sick with his cancer, yet his family would host these annual swimming parties for our class, as we seldom saw Sam during all this endless treatments. Sam could take one deep breath and swim underwater end-to-end and back again in his big backyard pool. I remember being stunned such a strong and cute blond boy could die. Then began my lifelong hatred for cancer, after all, what kind of disease would kill a great kid like Sam?

So, when I won that award in his name, I was thrilled. Absolutely elated. I took the big brass and wood plaque home and mounted it upon my wall until the next year, when the second recipient would ironically be my then best friend.

But I’m getting ahead of the game. Two years before, I was languishing under Mrs. Potschka’s relentless scrutiny, failing dismally at the now-complicated and challenging fourth grade, at the tail-end of a pretty debilitating childhood illness.

Being sick all the time, I didn’t accomplish much in fourth grade, but what I did accomplish, well, that has stayed with me my entire life.

I would daresay that Mrs. Potschka proved to be in the top three best teachers for writing I’ve ever had. I don’t think it’d be much of a stretch to say she was the tops, either.

Mrs. Potschka, being a strict and punitive Scotswoman, didn’t mind teaching by way of humiliation and competition. She was never, ever cruel, though. Just unflinching and unapologetic in her brashness. She divided her class into three, and the groups were called the “A”, “B”, and “C” writing groups.

Those in the “A” group could form coherent plots and write stories and reports in a competent, if not engaging, manner. The “B” group needed help with structure and with details but had the basic elements in grasp, although not completely in execution. The “C” group didn’t necessarily know its ass from a hole in the ground when tale-telling, though, and they were getting schooled from foundation on up.

As soon as one did learn the basics to make the jump to the next level, they did so rather ceremoniously. Mrs. Potschka would announce their elevation at the beginning of the next writing class, and they would get the ranking noted on the list of pupils’ groups on the wall. Everyone would clap, and class would begin.

Yours truly? “C” almost all the way. Trouble is, I wanted to be a good writer. At first, I didn’t try hard enough. The Scotswoman made a point of telling me that I was clearly a creative child and she knew I could do far better. I wonder sometimes if I should have been ranked a little higher, because I suspect she actually was just trying to push me very hard. I ended the year in the “A” group and would go on to win a province-wide competition the next year, that would result in my entire grade-five class getting better seating at the stadium during Pope John Paul II’s visit to Vancouver.

She would teach us how details made stories richer, how the more the readers would know, the more they would care. She taught us how to pretend we weren’t connected to what we were writing. Would we understand everything based only on what was written before us? Chances are, no.

But most importantly, she taught us about flow.

I can remember that class when she first taught us flow, you know. I remember none of the kids around me. It’s like this surreal moment in which I practically saw the lightbulb flick on. I remember me in my desk and Mrs. Potschka up there in front of the board. The projection screen was on and there was a one-page story projecting onto the white pull-down screen. She high-lighted the last line of each paragraph and the first line of each of the next.

She then explained how, if we read each each paragraph conclusion followed by the intro line of the next paragraph, there would always be an idea connecting the two. That was your flow. Flow was everything, she would explain. Flow was how you made your readers trust you, how you left them wanting more. Flow was the literary equivalent to a blanket on the couch – it gave you comfort and security and helped you settle in for a long tale. If you had flow, she taught, you’d always be someone worth reading.

She didn’t know it then and probably doesn’t know it now, but in teaching me about flow, Mrs. Potschka was giving me a lifelong goal. Whether it’s in my writing or in my life, flow has always been a highly sought element for me. I guarantee you, you look at the best things I’ve ever written, and you will always, always find linking ideas in the last/first lines of respective paragraphs; throughout the work, too.

It’s the simplest trick I know to making my work engaging and fluid. It’s the way I keep a conversational, easy cadence going in my writing. Sure, I have flaws in other areas, but I know that’s where my strength lies. I’ve learned so much from other writing teachers in my life – from actual teachers through to lovers and employers – but that trick is the number one thing that makes my writing what it is today. It was also Mrs. Potschka who taught me the importance of a great vocabulary. Within a year of her classes, I would be testing at a grade-12 vocabulary level while still in elementary.

By the time grade six rolled around, Mrs. Potschka was considerably warmer towards me. She took outside time to talk to me about my writing, wrote encouraging notes on my stories, and even occasionally read them aloud to others. I would enter grade seven with an A-average, and a lifelong love of making words work on the page.

It’s surprising who stays with us in our minds as the years fall away from us, but some characters deserve nothing less than permanence, and Mrs. Potschka, for me, is one.