A year after graduation, I was offered a position teaching a writing class. Teaching was a profession I had never seriously considered, though several of my stories had been published. I accepted the job without hesitation, as it would allow me to wear a tie and go by the name of Mr. Davis. My father went by the same name, and I liked to imagine people getting the two of us confused. "Wait a minute," someone might say, "are you talking about Mr. Davis the retired man, or Mr. Davis the respectable scholar?" The position was offered at the last minute, and I was given two weeks to prepare, a period I spent searching for briefcase   and standing before my full-length mirror, repeating the words, "Hello, class. I'm Mr. Davis." Sometimes I would give myself an aggressive voice. Sometimes I would sound experienced. But when the day eventually came, my nerves kicked in and the true Mr. Davis was there. I sounded not like a thoughtful professor, but rather a 12-year-old boy. I arrived in the classroom with paper cards designed in the shape of maple leaves. I had cut them myself out of orange construction paper. I saw nine students along a long table. I handed out the cards, and the students wrote down their names and fastened them to their breast pockets as I required. "All right then," I said. "Okay, here we go." Then I opened my briefcase and realized that I had never thought beyond this moment. I had been thinking that the students would be the first to talk, offering their thoughts and opinions on the events of the day. I had imagined that I would sit at the edge of the desk, overlooking a forests of hands. Every student would yell. "Calm down, you'll all get your turn. One at a time, one at a time!" A terrible silence ruled the room, and seeing no other opinions, I inspected the students to pull out their notebooks and write a brief essay related to the theme of deep disappointment. What did the students do when the author started his class?
They began to talk. They stayed silent. They raised their hands. They shouted to be heard.