Like [Tillie Olson]'s protagonist, [Samantha] was a single mother. She went on to relate a recurring nightmare she had of her 6-year-old thrashing in the lake, sinking underwater, while Samantha watched in horror, paralyzed on shore.

My friend who teaches business law part-time was bemoaning the high dropout rate in his night class, nearly 50 percent after the first two weeks. When I asked how the class operates, he said he combs over each chapter of the textbook with the students, explaining each paragraph.

"With so much material to cover," he said, "that's the only way it can be done."

I retire from teaching this year, and if I've learned one thing in 35 years of high school and college, it's that there's no such thing as the "only way."

Teaching from a textbook, for example, is agony for students. The classroom starts to feel like a jail cell, with the teacher as the desk sergeant reading the rules of confinement. If feels this way because human interaction is still the best thing going in school, and anything that comes between a teacher and his students, like a textbook cracked open on the teacher's desk, an overhead projector or even a Power Point presentation, can kill it.

The same is true of lecturing. Unless the professor is Hal Holbrook or Chris Rock, not only is a lecture not very effective, but it can be downright dull. A speech directed to 300 people for 90 minutes is dissemination of information that students can more quickly, cheaply and interestingly access on their own from a book, a Web site or a multitude of other media. Unfortunately lecturing is a hard habit to break, as research shows it's the primary means of instruction for 89 percent of professors, and universities see it as a way of herding the maximum number of tuition payers through the curriculum.

Which raises the question: What is the role of the teacher? The answer is motivation. A teacher should spark students to search out truth and acquire skills on their own. Prompting discussions, playing Socrates, igniting brainstorming, orchestrating small group projects, supplying hands-on experience, devising games, refereeing peer evaluation, risking experiments, standing on his head if he has to, a teacher kick-starts the process and then hops on to guide it along.

The subject of study, whether science or an art, must be connected to the students' lives. A teacher must draw them out, ascertain interests, fears, attitudes, so that together they can investigate how the material is applicable. This means a teacher's most important function is not to talk but to listen.

I'm reminded of a literature class a few years back, when I was teaching Tillie Olson's short story, "I Stand Here Ironing." Students were trading opinions, having difficulty analyzing the protagonist, a single mother obsessing about her failures with her child. That's when Samantha raised her hand.

"She's not ironing clothes," said Samantha. "She's ironing herself, going back and forth, scalding herself, punishing herself for always coming up short."

Like Olson's protagonist, Samantha was a single mother. She went on to relate a recurring nightmare she had of her 6-year-old thrashing in the lake, sinking underwater, while Samantha watched in horror, paralyzed on shore.

Those particular students successfully relied on each other to perceive universal themes in a classic piece of literature, and I hadn't uttered word. Which is why saying less and listening more is the best advice I could give to those who take up teaching.

I'm going to miss it.