The Best Way To Teach Teachers Something They Don’t Know
Say It, Send It, Mail it, Text it
Teaching is an obscure art. You will never know how much influence you have had on your students unless you catch a glimpse of their bookcases 30 years later.
One of my most influential professors said this to me.
I never told him how much he influenced me. He never saw my bookcase.
He was a meteor who streaked through the atmosphere of my graduate program for two short years and then returned to his Ivy League university of origin. I learned later that he had been hired to bring some order to a slightly dysfunctional department, but he never wanted that role. He preferred to build intellectual bonfires.
His brilliance was greater than I had ever encountered in another person and he carried it easily, without pretension. He was also a mensch. He peppered his classes with funny personal stories. He had graduate students over to read ancient poetry out loud (with wine). He invited me to house and dog-sit several times, and I got to see him as a pet lover, a husband, a teller of jokes. At one such visit to his house, he casually mentioned to me that I should look into a question that became my dissertation.
