By Devon Lindsey
Staff Writer

For four years, Lynn Bonakdar has taught sixth grade Language Arts at Stony Brook Middle School. This year, she will be teaching ninth and eleventh grade English at Westford Academy.

While she enjoyed working with the energetic 6th graders, Bonakdar started to miss teaching literature and working with older students.

High School English and Science were Bonakdar’s favorite classes, and she said it was her AP English class that led her to settle on pursuing a career in teaching. The teacher for her class made books seem like puzzles pieced together by literary terms, taking Bonakdar’s reading to a new level.

“He made me love reading, first of all – love reading more than I already did, and he helped me to look at books in a different way. It made me want to give other people that opportunity; to kind of see books and to see writing as a way to understand themselves better,” said Bonakdar.

Even before High School, Bonakdar wanted to teach. Growing up, she and her sister played ‘School’ and she was always the teacher. Later on, she helped students learn as a tutor.

“I’ve always kind of had that tendency to help people want to learn,” she said.

By college she knew she wanted to teach, and began focusing on English. As a student teacher she taught seventh and eleventh grade, along with some of her own classmates who would ask her to ‘fake grade’ their essays to help them see what needed to be worked on. As for middle school and high school, she enjoyed teaching both and didn’t know which to choose.

After college she had job offers from both middle schools and high schools, and decided to take the job at Stony Brook Middle School in Westford. Working with sixth graders was a joy for Bonakdar because of their energy.

“But there was a part of me that was really missing literature and books,” said Bonakdar.

Now she tries to bring the same passion for teaching to her own classes in WA that her AP English teacher did to his. So far she enjoys WA, has found the staff to be very welcoming, and the students fun to work with.