Transcript

By the way,  I know it's been a reasonably good session because you said,  "I don't know."  I don't know how you judge early classes,  but one of them is the willingness of the participant to say those three magical words,  "I don't know." . . . .

It's been a fun,  fun session.  I don't know if this will ever work for you,  and I think probably all your academic supervisors would say this is an absence of standards,  but I find almost any comment,  or any response has some usefulness in a class.  And so I look first to find,  "Is there something that I can work with?"  I can't get all the information -- . . .

Blame is a cheap thing to absorb for yourself.  It doesn't cost you a thing to say,  "Gee, Jack,  I think I sort of skedoodled that one up.  Could you give me some sort of a sentence that you might -- you might like?  And try that."  I think that in many ways the problem here isn't the student,  it's the professor,  in terms of how he has prepared for class,  and conducted the class.

The last sentence of the case reads,  "And Bert felt the class's mood never recovered its initial level of spontaneity."   Those early weeks are dangerous.  An incident with an individual almost inevitably impacts the rest of the group.   Treat it as a group problem.

I've always ended this little seminar with five lines from Miss Lowell,  the poet,  that I exploded into this definition of a teaching (way).  Teaching,  Miss Lowell said,  is like dropping letters into the post box of the unconscious.  You never know whether they have been posted,  delivered,  or read.  May your letters be well-posted,  studied,  read,  and acted upon in the coming year.  Thanks a lot.