THIS WAS the story about singer Joni Mitchell and Mr. Kratzman, her one-time teacher, that we ran two weeks ago. Joni, now at the Riverboat through May 5, dedicated her first album to Kratzman, "who taught me to love words." Her one regret was that she no longer knew where Kratzman was - or even if he was on this continent.

Well, the search is over. Kratzman - more correctly, Dr. Arthur Kratzman - found her.

"A colleague passing through Toronto saw the story in The Telegram and brought me the clipping," Dr. Kratzman explained yesterday from Edmonton, where he is head of the University of Alberta's department of elementary education. "I was delighted, of course: It's seldom that a teacher gets credit like that."

Joni was taught by Dr. Kratzman for a year at the Queen Elizabeth public school in Saskatoon when she was about 11. Now 23, she remembers him as "a great man who kept alive the fresh images that come out of the mouths of children." And as a man who "looked like Gable and Peck rolled into one, with gray sideburns."

How does Dr. Kratzman remember Joni Mitchell?

"A blonde bright-eyed kid," he said. "Very receptive to ideas. I can see her now, in the back seat of the second row... It was a wonderful group, all round."

Several other members of that Saskatoon group now live in Toronto, among them Steve Dewar, a CBC radio public-affairs producer, and Jim Calloway, Queen's Park correspondent for CHUM. Says Calloway: "I never knew another teacher like Kratzman. He was intensely interested in anyone interested in writing - he'd let you do anything if it came from inside you and he knew it wasn't a put on.

"One of his front teeth was gold, and it irritated some of us, flashing in the sun there. Funny thing was, we didn't give him a hard time. He was one of the very few we never gave a hard time to."

Dr. Kratzman, now 42 and minus the gold front tooth, moves to the University of Victoria as director of teacher education as of July 1. An Australian from Kingaroy, Queensland, he came to Canada to teach in 1949.

He has seen Joni Mitchell's work on only one TV show. But she will be playing Vancouver this summer - "and if I don't see her there, I'll certainly travel south and see her in California."