It was the day I brought in a paper to Dr. Wind's lecture that was due immediately after, in another class. I was putting the finishing touches on the paper, maybe stapling, or even seeing to a final proofread with the correction fluid.

There was a pause in Dr. Wind's locution as I busied myself. I might have known to look sharp then, to be careful, because this kind of thing could not be a good sign.

"Please...please...please...PLEASE...PLEASE!!!." Dr. Wind's voice started out softly, steadily rising in volume to quite a remarkable crescendo. He was glaring right at me, his veins bulging. I dropped my paper. I think I blushed clear to my scalp.

"You can do that later!!!" he boomed. His outrage and sense of betrayal over my infraction were palpable. It was as if he found out in that moment that his beloved wife were committing adultery. Then there was another long pause, while I stared at the paper, the fellow students around me stricken dumb.

Then, unbelievably, Dr. Wind resumed in his habitual monotone, just as if nothing had happened.

I still think about this remarkable incident from time to time. With the benefit of my mature experience, I have taken to psychoanalyzing Dr. Wind.

I believe the emotion in Dr. Wind's outburst was really pent-up frustration over his chronic lack of connection with students, with their seeming indifference to the subject matter--which was actually boredom with Dr. Wind's own disengaged and impersonal style. Dr. Wind's Chaucer course was disappointing; I believe it disappointed most of his students. The class was called a "seminar," but there was almost no discussion. It was all Dr. Wind, all the time, the ritual daily start of his ill-prepared rambling like somebody dropping a needle into a phonograph.

When I think back on myself in college, I was undisciplined, maybe unintentionally inconsiderate, but I had a lively intellect. I was curious and imaginative, and I was ripe to be engaged, to be "turned-on" to Chaucer--his work a rich field of study, after all. I sat there in Dr. Wind's class, day after day, all semester long, and for his salary, his credentials, and his position, Dr. Wind didn't draw me out. He didn't even try. Worse, as demonstrated by his outburst, and by other reputed such incidents, Dr. Wind blamed students for his own failure.

From Dr. Wind's class we fast-forward 20 years, to the travails of a substitute teacher in a long-term assignment in an English class in an inner-city high school. This teacher was a nondescript white woman nearing middle age. She prepared lesson plans, a task she thought was above and beyond the call for a substitute, paid, as she was, by the day, and not offered benefits. To say her kids were unappreciative is an understatement. They listened to music in class. They talked wantonly over her. They not only threw spit wads, they chucked objects at her turned back. Because the substitute never did learn all their names, she couldn't hold them accountable, and the vermin traipsed in and out of the room as they pleased.

The teacher, though not diminutive, went home each day longing for a physical stature she did not possess. In particular she longed for a big, commanding voice--her own, ladylike one tending to crack when she raised it. In private, the teacher often cursed her students, wishing them ill, and smirking as she thought of their dead-end futures. But, during the weeks of her assignment, through her gathering sense of injury, one memory haunted the teacher.

It had to do with asking a boy, at a speaking volume, to "see her a moment after class," in regard to some practical matter, perhaps a transfer.

Abruptly, a new kind of silence fell in the room. It seemed about fifteen kids had overheard this private communication. Then, in an earnest clamor the teacher never would forget, a horde of teenagers were demanding that she--the "ol' white bitch who didn't teach nof'in'"--"talk to them." Each haughty, jaded kid in fact wanted the teacher's undivided attention. As she had despaired of ever "getting through" to her disrespectful students, the random fifteen nearest her desk had detected a longed-for possibility, that of connection with an adult, with her. Whatever they acted like, they wanted sorely to be reached.

I was that teacher. It was my job to reach them. Some would like to attribute my failure to do so to the great difficulties I faced in working in a poor inner-city school. My job was harder than it might have been, for that reason, but that's not really it. I would say my failure to get through to those kids, given the depth of their need, resulted from the methods I was using, as much as from the lack of resources in my environment. A failure it was, and completely on my side.

I have one last story, about a volunteer organization in which I participated during part of the last year. The president of the organization was also a volunteer, a fiftyish woman I'll call Priscilla. In taking on the volunteer commitment, Priscilla made it clear she was keeping busy during a period of unemployment, while she and her husband sought jobs in an area where they had hoped to relocate. She had come out of a long-term civil-service job with a branch of the military, where she was apparently successful and well-paid. My experience of Priscilla led me to wonder what kind of people her employer retained and promoted. She was awful.

Part of Priscilla's volunteer job was to lead meetings and to introduce speakers. It isn't that she didn't prepare for those tasks. She planned minutely, writing her meeting topics and their allotted times out on the whiteboard in front of the room, or distributing them. But, bafflingly, during the meeting, Priscilla could be counted on to disregard her agenda completely. At one point, I was present when Priscilla actually held up an on-time featured speaker by twenty minutes, while she rambled. No, her stories had nothing to do with the meeting topic. They weren't even entertaining.

Most troublingly of all, Priscilla was also given to berating meeting attendees, all adults, for "coming in late," for "not taking our organizational roles seriously." I'm normally punctual, but it's true, during the months I attended Priscilla's meetings, I started to lapse. I would come in five, ten, twenty minutes late, unable to find the motivation to be on time, and frankly hoping to miss as much of Priscilla's chaotic "introduction" as possible. Inexorably, I became a part of the "problem" Priscilla decried.

I could not help it that Priscilla bored me, that I felt she did not respect my time.

Everything about Priscilla was soft. Her dress was soft, her voice was soft, her manner was soft, soft and insistent, even when it was scolding. When I think of Priscilla, I think of her softness and vulnerability, and really, I feel the poignancy of her long-time workplace's betrayal of her. Clearly, Priscilla had been given perfunctorily flattering performance evaluations for years, and promoted perfunctorily.

Priscilla came out of long-term employment lacking what I think of as core professional competencies, for those who command high salaries, or who hope to command them. Organization. Effective and appropriate use of communication. Respect for others' time. Most egregiously, Priscilla lacked an ethic of responsibility.

For her softness, Priscilla had a kind of arrogance, one too often supported in traditional power structures, as Dr. Wind's troubles, and my own, clearly showed. Organizational politics could not be blamed for thwarting Priscilla's intended aims; her failure was simpler than that. I think of myself, and of other organization members during Priscilla's tenure, taking our unpaid time to attend functions because we wanted to participate and to contribute. I also think of my much-younger self in Dr. Wind's classroom, his eager student, and, later, as a substitute teacher with kids who craved for adult attention. For the struggling professor, teacher, and manager, the will of "the other side" was always there, even when it was not perceived. That will wanted to be understood and to be met, by those whose job it was to meet it.

Priscilla did not realize she was not owed special respect, merely because of her organizational title. Among busy people, she would have to work to earn it.

When I think of teaching, and of the amorphous category of "professional inspiring," of which that discipline is a part, I think of how much I hate the word "leadership." Yes, the existence of "leaders" connotes also the existence of "followers," and maybe that's part of my discomfort. But I also think this term too readily supports the delusions of those in relative positions of power, that they are not, in fact, servants.
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