Best professor you've ever had and why

Consolation
Sun, 06 Aug 2017 00:25:58 +0000

My two best professors were both in the English Department at Wellesley: Robert Pinsky and David Ferry. Both are accomplished poets as well as scholars. Both are brilliant teachers, and kind and wonderful human beings.

My other best teacher was a HS teacher, Robert Gardner, a history teacher at New Canaan High School. Again, a brilliant teacher and a fine human being. Here is my story about him. One day in European History sophomore year he was lecturing about English History. As it happened, I had just returned from 2 years at an English boarding school where we had studied nothing but, and I was already familiar with what he was talking about. So instead of listening, I had a book open on my desk and was surreptitiously–or so I thought–engaged in reading it. So absorbed was I that I didn’t notice when Mr. Gardner, walked down the aisle of desks, looked over my shoulder, and without missing a beat walked back up to the front of the class. Everyone was aghast. After class, people asked me if I realized what happened. I had no idea. The next year, I asked him about it. He said, “Well, I looked at what you were reading, and thought, ‘Am I going to tell her to stop reading Plato and listen to me?’”