Thank You, Mr. Brisbin

For years, my favorite class was always my language arts class. They were all pretty similar in how they were set up. Read a book, take notes, talk about what you wrote the next day, and then repeat; maybe write an essay here and there, and then wait for your percentage on said essay. My senior year language arts class was different. My teacher, Mr. Brisbin, had a “no grading system” which means he was never going to give us a grade based on a number, he did not see a fulfilling purpose of this. Instead, Mr. Brisbin would have us do our work and then talk to us one on one to track our progress. This allowed us to learn what we did well and what we need to work on while also building a personal relationship with each of his students. He will always be one of my favorite teachers. He is the reason I decided to continue writing in college because he taught me how to do it well.

Mr. Brisbin is also the man who got me into poetry. Oh, how excited he would be when he came into the room with a new poem to teach us about. The first poem he ever showed us was Something You Should Know by Clint Smith. It was this poem that showed me that there can be power in poetry and that it was fun to be creative. The poem is about when the author worked at a pet store, but if you read closely and analyze it deeper you would see that it’s really about fear and growth. Every time I write a poem I ask if it is something my senior year language arts teacher would be proud of. After finishing my first college essay, and seeing that I got an 86% on it, I emailed him to say thank you for everything he has taught me. I really hope I’m doing him proud because he really changed how I view the importance of writing.