That Back-to-School Feeling

As the school year resumes, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the work—and pleasure—of teaching and learning, reflect on their own experiences in the classroom, and counsel listeners on scholastic concerns. One teacher calls in asking for texts she could assign to combat apathy among her high-school students; another is looking for works that depict the highs and lows of her chosen career; and a graduate student seeks works of poetry to convince skeptics of the form’s artistic value. The hosts discuss the ways in which teaching is itself a kind of art form. “Teaching is so much a kind of performance,” Cunningham says. “You have to be the one out on the ledge . . . to establish a new frontier of, ‘You are allowed to be excited about this.’ ”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Less Than Zero,” by Bret Easton Ellis

Homer’s Odyssey

“Black Boy,” by Richard Wright

“The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“A Complicated Kindness,” by Miriam Toews

“Black Swan” (2010)

“The Holdovers” (2023)

“Democracy and Education,” by John Dewey

“The Class” (2008) 

“The Simpsons” (1989-)