I’ll take a short break from the “good faith” series to share a video featuring Rod Serling, creator and principal writer of The Twilight Zone, as he talks to a small group of students at Ithaca College in 1972.

I first saw these interviews at a friend’s house as he showed off (and rightfully so) his new boxed set of laserdiscs collecting all of the original Twilight Zone episodes. This would have been in the early 1990s, just as I was beginning my career as an English professor. I vividly recall my fascination with the way Serling spoke to these students, the care he took to listen to them with intense attention, and his refusal either to talk over them or to pretend he was just one of them. The seminars are teacher-centered, not “student-centered,” because this teacher, and the center he helped to form in that room, was an example to all. And rightfully so.

Here’s one fascinating discussion, in which Serling takes care to disagree with one student but in a very cordial manner, and then takes equal care to engage the one woman in the room by highlighting her very important question. I felt such strength and warmth and true intellectual leadership emanating from Serling in this environment. I said to myself, “I want to teach like that.” And I still do.