Teacher, student reunited

ELIDA - When Jamie Green sat in Elida High School teacher Marsha Jackson's English composition class 20 years ago, he knew his teacher truly wanted to be there.

"She was a fun teacher to have. She was lively. It seemed like she wanted to be here," Green said Monday during a visit with his former teacher.

"I do. This is why I'm still here," Jackson quickly responded.

Green, now known as James, visited Jackson's English classes Monday, giving students college advice and homework assignments. The poet and English professor at the University of Cincinnati is making them write poems and will return today to see how they turned out.

Green, who credits Jackson for endlessly working with him on his writing, recently e-mailed his teacher asking if he could visit some of her classes. The 1989 graduate took Jackson's classes his junior and senior years. Jackson was thrilled to have him back in class.

"After 19 years, I was shocked to get that e-mail," she said. "That is what makes teaching fun. This is cool."

Green credits Jackson's policy of making students rewrite essays as making him a better writer, saying he had a good foundation. Also an Elida graduate, Jackson said the same about her English teacher.

"I took a lot of what I learned from her and put it in my teaching," Jackson said.

It took some time for Green to get back to writing after high school. After graduating from The Ohio State University, Green returned home and worked in waste management for a year and then joined the Marines. That led to a job as an imagery analyst with the CIA.

While in the Marines, Green met a romance novelist who invited him to a workshop. He decided to get back writing.

"Eventually I found poetry because of the time constraints of jobs I was working," he said. "You can't whip up 400 pages on a Saturday night."

In 2001, Green began teaching high school English in Cincinnati and joined the University of Cincinnati staff three years ago. He had never taught before, and is glad he started at the high school level, although admitted to his old teacher that it wasn't easy.

"I had a senior class the first day and they stomped all over me," he said, both laughing. "High school teachers are in the trenches. I wouldn't have been as good of a college teacher as I have been if I had not had high school teaching experience."

The two shared many laughs Monday, including finding out that as young college students they both sometimes "recycled" high school papers. Green would also write other students' essays for money while in college, not something he recommended the Elida students do. He often wrote papers for classes he never even took.

"No wonder you were so good," Jackson said laughing. "The more you write the better you get."