“Be quiet.” No one actually ever said that to me – in fact, it was usually the opposite. “Speak up.” “What did you say?” “I couldn’t understand you.” But every time someone told me to be louder, to be clearer, I wanted to shut my mouth and never open it again.

Years of living with a lisp had taught me that it was better to not say anything than to speak and risk being misunderstood, leading to embarrassment and awkwardness. As a result of my silence, I felt distanced from most of my peers, having only a few people I felt were friends. “Kathryn? Oh, she’s quiet.” That’s what most people would say when they thought of me. “Quiet” might as well have been part of my name. I was okay with that. I didn’t need to be heard.

September of last year that all changed.

I started my first day of creative writing class with Ms. Haist expecting to learn about, well, writing. I expected to fill out plot diagrams and learn the proper way to punctuate dialogue. I didn’t expect my life to be changed.

But changed it was.

One of my most vivid memories of those first few weeks of creative writing is of our free writes. Every day we would be given a different writing prompt and then, if we wished, we could share what we had written with the class. I remember sitting and listening to others read their work, and I distinctly remember thinking: That will never be me. I’ll never have the courage to do that.

Then, one day in October, I was really pleased with what I had written, so pleased that I wanted to share. I remember my heart pounding in my chest as I raised my hand to read, and those urgent little voices in my mind listing all the reasons why it wasn’t a good idea: They won’t understand you. You have a lisp, remember? Besides, your writing isn’t that good. Be quiet. Be quiet.

I swallowed the voices down and let my real voice come out.

I could hear it shaking as I read, hear every stutter and mistake. The only thing that kept me going from line to line through that page and a half was the fact that giving up in the middle would have been even more mortifying.

I’d like to say that I finished reading feeling ecstatic and free, like the proverbial weight had been lifted off my chest, but that wasn’t the case. I felt exposed and painfully raw, like sunburnt skin. Adrenaline coursed through my body in an endless cycle; it had nowhere to go, once my mouth had closed and shut off the stream of words. I was terrified.

The next day, I did it again.

And again, and again, and again. Soon I was reading out loud nearly every day – something that the me of the previous year would never have considered in her most fantastical of daydreams. I couldn’t stop, and I couldn’t have gotten to that point without the support of my class and our teacher, Taushia Haist.

Mrs. Haist is also a sponsor of our school literary magazine, The Bear Scratch. She is one of those teachers you don’t feel frightened to approach; you know she will help you if you need it. Her dedication to her students and to making the literary magazine the best it can be is amazing, but the first thing that comes to my mind will always be that semester of creative writing. Mrs. Haist made time for each and every student, and did everything from organizing poetry cafés to reading and editing student writing, even outside of what she graded for class.

I’ve changed so much since this time last year, all because of Mrs. Haist and my wonderful classmates. I’ve become stronger, more confident. I may still not be the most outgoing, social person, but I’ve become better at oral presentations, which used to absolutely terrify me. I read my poetry out loud at a citywide literacy jam, which I had attended the year before but had been too afraid to read. Not anymore.

Every time those little voices try to tell me to be quiet, I think of all the encouragement I’ve received in class and I know that I deserve to be heard. Thank you, Mrs. Haist and my creative writing class of 2016, for teaching me how to be loud.