05/29/2026
“I often tell the graduate students in our department that teaching’s like conducting an orchestra. The conductors don’t play an instrument; instead, what they’re doing is asking for, like, a little more from the woodwinds here, a little more from the cello, right? You, play faster … let's hear you now.
In the classroom, the students are the musicians, and everybody's playing different instruments. Everybody has different skills, different ways of relating to the world. Some students talk exactly the right amount. Some people talk a lot, and others say something cryptic and then go a little too quiet after that. What comes out of the discussion depends heavily on who's playing what, and your responsibility as a professor is to get it to sound good.
I think, in a good class, you come in expecting one thing and then what you expected turns out not to be true at all. So I design classes to have what I call a rug pull.
My favorite thing to teach is Paradise Lost (it’s the greatest poem in the English language; you can quote me on that). It’s the story of Adam and Eve’s fall from Paradise. When the poem starts, Satan seems kind of great: he's a revolutionary, a rebel, we think we're supposed to be on his side. Lots of sophisticated readers—William Blake, the Romantic poets—think he’s the hero.
Here’s the rug pull: the poem itself is tempting you. It’s demonstrating how easy it is to sympathize and kind of fall in love with Satan. And you're supposed to exercise critical thought to realize you've been seduced. It's a great moment because when we first learn the story of Adam and Eve, we’re, like, ‘What idiot would fall for this?’ Paradise Lost demonstrates that we are those idiots. It says, ‘Look how easy it is to fall prey to temptation.’
When I teach this material, I don't think I'm doing much; the literature is doing everything. Back to the metaphor of the orchestra: I didn't write the score. It’s like when you see a great movie, you just want to say to everyone,” You gotta see this.” Basically, that's my job, to say, ‘You gotta read this.” I just want to help smart, sophisticated students appreciate what's there.”
—Jess Keiser, A06, associate professor of English
is a series of personal stories shared by members of the Tufts community.
[📸: Alonso Nichols/Tufts University]
