TRAINING TO BECOME A TEACHER

Mrs. Korthaus taught me everything I needed to know, even before I had students of my own

- BY Kristine Gasbarre FROM THE BOOK SHOW, DON'T TELL

I was 14 when I met a firecracker of a soul, a bombastic professor of life with colossal charisma who stood all of 4-foot-10.

Mrs. Korthaus was the beloved English teacher at our rural Pennsylvania Catholic high school. She hadn't married until she was almost 40, and hadn't become a teacher until her husband's job brought them to our industrial town, where there weren't many careers for women. In the 1990s, we subtly noticed that her years in corporate life, being financially independent, had given her a sense of fearlessness that she transmitted to us. She gave me an unjudged ground to tumble through young mistakes and learn, by trial and error, who I wanted to become—who I could become.

As much as she taught me about literary works and journalism, knowledge I would take into my career as a writer and the lead editor of the Reader's Digest sister site TheHealthy.com, I also studied the way she made the world better and herself happy. I'd never known a female so self-propelled.

A small town has a way of making a girl's whole world small. When it came time to decide where to go next and what to do for the rest of my life, I found it tough to imagine what was “out there,” and even tougher to know what was inside. Of me.

Sure, I performed well in school, but I wasn't genuinely invested in my potential—in fact, I feared success. A career seemed scary. If I'd had my way back then, I'd have chosen to stay right where I was for the rest of my life. It was a blessing that I didn't get my way. Mrs. Korthaus had an important part in that.