My High School English Teacher

In high school I had a teacher named Mrs. Yang. She was my ninth grade English teacher. During that time I can recall that I was absolutely slow at writing and reading, which to be honest I still am today. For example when she assigned a paper to complete, I could never fulfill a page or fully express my thoughts to complete an assignment. I hated writing. One encouraging advice she told me was to slowly jot down my thoughts and structure them out into paragraphs. She said writing took time and writing was like looking out at a window. One assignment Mrs. Yang had us write about was an article called “Tongue”. It was about an Asian-American writer who immigrated from southeast China. She explained how different it was speaking English at school with her peers oppose to speaking English at home with her parents. She would later state that the English she spoke at home was “broken or had no structure”. For me being the first generation Hmong Asian-American and having parents who immigrated from Laos, we seldom spoke English at home. In a sense I could relate. I remember this particular article because it was the last assignment I completed for Mrs. Yang. Mrs. Yang was an inspiring teacher. Today as I look back, I know Mrs. Yang has helped changed my writing in some way or form.