Freshman year, I was scared and I stuttered when I asked dumb questions. But there was a class where I could talk and not feel stupid. In a world of competition where people were numbers and the number was your grade, I had landed in a class where you were your ideas and your ideas were good. English was the class that welcomed me when everything else had turned its back. Where I didn't stutter and there were no dumb questions.
It's not really English that did this for me. It was Annie Thoms.
A Stuy graduate, funny, sweet, never mean. She pushed us to do our best. Even when I was overexcited and annoying she let me be myself and embraced me for it. Exasperation, which usually made teachers hate me, went hand in hand with encouragement and constructive criticism.
And it wasn't just the actions that catered to my disruptive personality that spoke to me, that made my English class perfect. The class itself was stellar--even when I didn't like the books, the class was exciting, engaging, and fun. A class of thirty seemed like ten.
Two years later, I finally know who I want to be and I'd have to thank Ms. Thoms.
-Natalie Grybauskas
Junior, Stuyvesant High School