This past December, John Elder, College Professor Emeritus, shared the story of his first week in his dream job as part of the “Purpose and Place: Voices of Middlebury” event during the Burlington launch of For Every Future: The Campaign for Middlebury. Warning: it did not go as planned.

Watch Elder’s talk above, or read the full transcript below.

Transcript

Fifty years and, uh, three months ago, I was on the third floor of Monroe Hall, awaiting the beginning of my very first class at Middlebury College.

I was fresh out of grad school, 26 years old, and I felt as if I’d won the lottery. My goal in going to grad school was to teach at a fine liberal arts college. And here I was. I was, uh, extremely excited, extremely hopeful, and I’d paid a lot of attention to preparing for the day.

It was a seminar, an introductory seminar for, for people interested in literature, mostly first-year students. And, we’d, we’d had a story by Hawthorne assigned for our original class. And I was, uh, up there arranging the room, moving all of the folding chairs to the side, except for the seventeen we needed in our circle.

I’d also given quite a lot of thought to my wardrobe. As you can see, I’m a a style plate, and, uh, I, I had bought a, a Harris Tweed jacket because I’d seen, um, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf.” And I knew that, I knew that Richard Burton modeled what, uh, New England College professors wore. That’s also when I learned how much New England College professors drank. But that’s a different story.

Uh, so I was wearing my, my tweet coat, a an Oxford shirt, a regimental tie, uh, and also my new Levi’s and my beloved cowboy boots, because I was from the West, and I wanted my Western identity to be part of my entry into this, uh, echo tone. Looking back at it, it was a, a ludicrous look, uh, although I might describe it as centaur chic, but, uh, but I was there.

I, I was feeling pretty good about everything. My, my costume and also my notes. I came as I waited for the, the students, I folded down the little writing surface next to the chair and was looking at two pages filled with detailed notes. My, my questions for this first class, my first ever college class.

Uh, so in, in hope, as the students, um, settled in, I, I told ’em my first question, which landed with a thud. Not one student spoke to it. I realized, of course, uh, thinking back to it, they were in their first college class, too. And the last thing a new college student wants to do is to say something that others consider stupid.

So they, it’s very human of them. So they were, they were quiet. They were cagey. I, I moved on to my second question, but I realized as I went on and a kind of queasiness came into my exuberance, that, that, um, my questions were very directive.

I had about three dozen of them, and they were supposed to take people on a voyage into the heart of Hawthorne’s story, uh, leaving them with an enhanced sense of his artistry.

But the problem was, what I really had done was to outline a voyage into Hawthorne’s story that I had just taken myself. It was a very premeditated, uh, invitation to students to replicate my reading as such. It was both obnoxious and not very accessible, so that it was, it was a disaster.

I would ask a question. Sometimes there was a comment, often there was no comment. And then I would make a kind of lame scrabble toward the next question. They never had much context. There was no momentum.

And, uh, I just had the most sinking feeling. It was turning… What, what was going to be a triumphant beginning to a long college career was, it was a disaster—worse than any class I’d ever been a student in.

Uh, and, and because there was so little conversation, I ran out of questions, and, and there were minutes left on the clock. If I’d been a, if I’d been a more, uh, seasoned professor, I would’ve said something sort of in the transparent jocularity that professors used to get themselves out of a fix.

Well, that’s enough for today. We’ll pick it up next time.

But, but I, I couldn’t say that because I was too sad to say that. It, uh, it’s pathetic. I know, but it’s just the truth. In fact, I was so sad. I was so desolate that I couldn’t even look out and meet my students’ faces.

All I could do was sit in my chair and stare down at my cowboy boots as they rested on the recently waxed linoleum floor of Monroe third floor.

And, uh, I didn’t speak. I just sat there staring at my boots. And the minutes passed. It felt endless.

Of course, the students were dead silent. I was silent. And finally the bell rang and they got up. They were out of there very quickly, uh, but quietly, no conversation.

And, and I followed them. I felt disconsolate and defeated, and I don’t even know what I did with myself in the next two days, but I was back then for my next class, I didn’t have a, a sequence of, uh, phony directive questions. I did have a page with references to passages I thought might be good for us to talk about.

And I opened up by saying, what strikes you about this story? And they roared into the topic. They were all talking at once. They were talking and tumbling over each other. And I looked around at amazement. They all had pages of notes in front of them because, um, they clearly wanted to make sure that silence did not recur. And they, and they didn’t have faith in my ability to teach a class. They thought at least somebody would be there who could teach a class. So they, they were all prepared.

And, and there was another motive I I perceived very clearly, which is they pitied me. I was so clueless, uh, and you’d think I might’ve been humiliated by the, by the, the pity of 18-year-olds in their second college class. But I was grateful, uh, and I’m still grateful at their, at their kindness, because in fact, it turned into a wonderful class. We developed, we developed momentum. And furthermore, I began to realize that my real role in a class like this was not leading the students in a direction I had chosen to take us, but supporting them as they explored a way into literature that was meaningful for them.

So I could, I could, after they made a, a point, I could point us to a passage that that would reinforce or tug against what they’d said. I could encourage students over and over again to tie their connection to something that somebody had said previously. So it wasn’t just a, a collection of, um, of isolated ideas. It was a growing conversation

As this went on and as we got better and better at hearing and listening and reading and collaborating, I experienced something, uh, that, that I’ve thought of since then as liftoff. The moment in a class—and it’s very palpable—when the level of conversation rises and people are aware of taking part of something that no one of us alone could have achieved.

That became, in fact, my criterion for success in a class at Middlebury. That experience of liftoff. It didn’t happen—and over the next 37 years, it remained my criterion—it didn’t happen every class, but it happened plenty of times.

It was the bliss of my vocation as a teacher at Middlebury. And it helped me to realize that my primary responsibility was not to transfer information. It was to serve and foster the development of an authentic, inclusive community of learners in which I could also participate.

And that’s what I learned my first week at Middlebury College.