There is a particular type of discomfort that comes with the Rogerian method of debate. Simply put, being able to argue–as well as understand–the other side of a topic is incredibly difficult, especially on a topic for which you have strong beliefs. ​ Mr. Evans made us do this. Every. Single. Night. ​ AP Lang was the first and only class I've experienced where work was not simply put upon us to keep us busy or to tell the teacher that we read a book. Instead, the goal was simple: be curious. He hated the five-paragraph essay like it was bad faith, and, eventually, I learned exactly what it was. While that type of writing has its place, it was not a way to engage my curiosity but instead to repeat my existing certainty. ​ We always began with the Rogerian argument. Before you state your own points, you must restate the opposing ones: accurately, completely, and respectfully. The Rogerian requires you to engage your opponent's argument so deeply that you can literally argue their side. And this is all before you even begin to write your own words. ​ Every night we wrote in this style, and the topics were not easy. Among them were essays about the brutality of slavery, some by Joan Didion on the Insidious Ethics of Morality, and even topics like Artificial Intelligence and the effects of new (at the time) technology on the world, and especially my generation. ​ One night, the prompt was Gloria Anzaldúas’s How to Tame a Wild Tongue. The essay describes language as an identity, about how institutions flatten you into something more manageable, though perhaps less personal, simply through the medium of language. I felt something for the essay that I couldn’t describe in English. So I wrote it in Spanish. ​ I didn’t ask permission. ​ I didn’t ask for forgiveness. ​ I just turned it in. ​ And he accepted it. ​ There was no note, no caveat, no question asked, only a conversation with my Spanish teacher to help him read it. I realized in that moment that he was presiding over a classroom where my ideas were taken seriously. Words were currency in a market of thought. ​ Both Anzaldúa and Evans recognized something in language: the freedom to think fully is inseparable from the freedom to speak the language in which thoughts are formed. It wasn’t a situation in which Mr. Evans gave me overt permission, but he granted it by never taking it away. ​ I am less certain about the world than I was when I was sixteen, but now I know better than to call that a weakness. Certainty closes curiosity. Mr. Evans never tried to teach me what to think, but instead gave me a framework to explore it every night on the page, until the words revealed something I didn’t already know. Sometimes those words don’t belong to you, and that's okay. Sometimes they’re in a language your teacher can’t read. And he accepted all of it, and really, he accepted all of me.