Michelle Kuo (’09), Visiting Professor at National Taiwan University, published a piece on Substack discussing her experience co-teaching an English language course at a juvenile detention center in Taipei. Michelle pondered how linguistic barriers may create new types of connections, rethinking her approach to teaching and the questionable “value” of perfection, alongside ideas of “mastery” and identity (“Letting Go of English and Other Language Stories,” Jun. 16). 

“Once you decide you want not to become perfect but to live, a spaciousness settles and spreads. And once you realize the fictions of what it takes to learn the language you’ve been taught—mastery, domination—you teach differently. It’s not all about revision, the final product. Yes, all that will come for the writer. But first: openness to the world, to the act of inscription, to the radical risk in letting yourself go.”