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It feels only right that I begin my re-encountering with my mom. In kindergarten, while the rest of the kids were being challenged in learning to read, I was repeatedly punished by one of the teachers, repeating reading level 1 books when the rest of the class moved onto reading levels 30 and beyond. If my memory is correct, the teacher in charge of reading placements had an issue with my mom and refused to let me advance in my reading proficiency. My mom handled the situation by taking it upon herself to teach me how to read. At the time, I hated reading and I hated my mom forcing me to read things that were so challenging; every time I finally felt good about my reading level, my mom would replace my books with texts that were even more challenging. At five, I wasn't a fan of this. As an adult, who is a voracious reader and has always read at higher level than my peers, I am forever grateful to my mom for pushing me.

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For most of my childhood, I hated reading and English. I can't remember what subjects I did like; I just know that it was never English class. In 7th grade, that all changed. Two specific events coincided that created my love of reading, a love that hasn't faded or ebbed since. One is that I discovered The Hunger Games. That series was my favorite for years, and I've read each book a dozen times easily, probably two dozen times for the third book. I had never felt as connected to a character as I did with Katniss, and I'm not sure I ever will again. At the same time, I had Ms. Boyce, who is objectively the coolest middle school humanities teacher to ever exist. She fanned the flames of my love of reading at every twist and turn.

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7th Grade, Ms. Boyce: Latin and Greek Routes

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7th Grade, Ms. Boyce: Latin and Greek Routes

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My learning of Greek and Latin roots is a minor foot note in my language development, but being forced to memorize and learn dozens of roots has helped me over and over again in reading comprehension through the years. It's helped me figure out what words mean in English, as well as allowed me to decode the written words of other languages.

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By far the event most indicative of what learning English was like at my conservative, ultra-white high school was when we did a debate on the book Hiroshima in my 9th grade class. The book recounted the stories of a handful of people who were in Hiroshima the day the US dropped the atomic bomb on the city, and our wrap up for the unit was a debate. We had to argue for whatever side we were assigned and weigh in on the big question Ms. Gerber, our teacher, posed: Was the US in the right to drop the atomic bomb? There was a caveat, however, placed on us; we were not allowed to use any arguments based in emotion or ones that played on sympathy. I don't think I really need to go into all of the ways this assignment was not only racist, but also dehumanizing and biased favorably toward war crimes. Suffice to say, I was placed on the side of arguing against the bombing, and our team, just as every other team in the other classes on the side of anti-war crimes, lost miserably.

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I had Ms. Gerber in both 9th and 11th grade, and her classes were composed 90% of busy work which was so overwhelming in quantity I would have to spend a minimum of two hours on it, every night. Not only that, but at the end of the day, Gerber's feedback and instruction instilled within me and rewarded me for incredibly bad writing habits.

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In direct opposition to my experience in Gerber's classes, my next year in high school, I joined poetry class and workshop outside of high school, in Venice Beach. It was such an enjoyable and memorable experience for me that to this day, I love poetry and find writing poetry to be one of my best and favorite outlets for stress. I also can still recite my poetry teacher's favorite poem, William Carlos William's "Red Wheelbarrow", from memory.

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10th Grade, Ms. Wilson: Writing an Epic (and Being a Jerk)

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10th Grade, Ms. Wilson: Writing an Epic (and Being a Jerk)

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All that time spent writing poetry definitely went to teenage-Finn's head. When we were given an assignment to write our epic poem in groups following our unit on Homer in 10th grade English, I bulldozed all over my group and insisted on writing the whole thing because I was firmly convinced I was the next Homer, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, etc. To this day, I'm still pretty ashamed about how I handled the whole thing and treated my group members.

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10th Grade, Academic Decathlon: How to spin not knowing what you're talking about?

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10th Grade, Academic Decathlon: How to spin not knowing what you're talking about?

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Sophomore-Finn's ego was further inflated by my time on the Academic Decathlon team. One of the events for the Decathlon was essay writing, where we had one hour to write an essay on one of two prompts, one of which was on that year's novel Heart of Darkness. (Side note: I've been assigned that book more than any other for school and it remains one of my least favorite books). For further context, my school team competed in a district that consistently had the highest scoring teams on a national level. So when I got a perfect score on the essay portion, scoring higher than anyone else in that incredibly competitive district, my arrogance grew exponentially.

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Something I'm still proud of from back then is how I restarted my school's creative writing club. My involvement fell apart senior year due to mental health reasons, but kick starting that club and gathering students who loved writing still makes me look back with pride. I created a space for them to hang out and trade ideas, and I even started an event at a local museum for all of us to share our work. I was far from perfect as a president, but I still like to think I did some good there.

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12th Grade, Mrs. Stucken: What do you mean I'm not perfect?

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12th Grade, Mrs. Stucken: What do you mean I'm not perfect?

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Mrs. Stucken was my academic decathlon coach for two years and my AP Lit teacher. I admired her so much, but became somewhat resentful when she became the first English teacher to give me a D on an essay I wrote. At the time I couldn't understand what her problem was, since I was doing the same thing every other teacher praised me for. As an adult, I'm really grateful she (tried to) take me off my high horse even if I didn't understand or appreciate it at the time.

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College Freshman: Relearning how to write an essay

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College Freshman: Relearning how to write an essay

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My first quarter at university, I had to take the standard English survey class on Early, Middle, and Early Modern English. That instructor was a grad student, and I remember being incredibly shocked when she told me the same things Mrs. Stucken had been trying to tell me for the last year: that I was not good at writing essays. I don't remember that instructor's name, but I do remember that she was the one I listened to, that she was the one who taught me how to write and structure an actually good essay.

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College Freshman, Sarah: My favorite English class ever

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College Freshman, Sarah: My favorite English class ever

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Sarah was a creative writing MFA student who taught the first creative writing class I ever took in college (almost seven years ago now). Her class was so much fun, as well as incredibly challenging. The focus of the class was on short stories, and I can confidently say that the way she taught that class was the most fun I've ever had in any English class ever.

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Post-Graduate, Ethnic American Lit: Grading is dumb 

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Post-Graduate, Ethnic American Lit: Grading is dumb 

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I took an Ethnic American class this past Spring at Santa Rosa Junior College as I prepared to start at BE3. I adored every single text we read for that class, with all of them being something I had never encountered before. Not only that, but Prof. Servais used a hybrid labor and contract based grading system that entirely shifted the way I understood curriculum structuring and assessment. She gave us freedom and agency in a way I had never had before, and I hope to give the same things to my own students.