The Classroom is Now Open

The college, and by the college I mean Vestibule Plowden-Wardlow, announced on Monday that this is Open Classrooms Week, “an opportunity for all faculty to visit classes and share pedagogy.”

I didn’t pay much attention to this, like most of the faculty I’m too busy to duck into the classroom down the hall, and like most of Vestibule’s initiatives I assumed this too would burn off with the morning sun. What I hadn’t counted on was the abundance of time available to the herd of emeritus faculty who hobble onto campus most days. Vestibule’s initiative was litnip for these aging boomers looking to fill up their empty schedules; they could hit up the subsidized faculty lunch, wander off to a class and still be home in time to catch All Things Considered.  And so Open Classrooms Week became not an exercise in cross disciplinary inquiry but a disruptive, college sponsored October surprise.

I thought I’d managed to dodge any involvement in Open Classrooms Week but as I ran into class yesterday—late—there, sitting at the head of the table, was Leo Papadakis.

Leo Papadakis taught musical theater here for three hundred years, retired, and now refuses to go gently into the ether of assisted living. Instead he wanders in every Tuesday and Thursday, locks himself into his office and cranks a recording of Brigadoon until his 11.30 soup break. After soup he blasts the The Fantastiks until exactly 4, locks up and makes his way to the train. And now he was here, in my classroom holding forth to a table full of utterly mystified undergraduates.

Some Additional Thoughts on Leo Papadakis, Everyone’s Favorite Living Footnote

Leo Papadakis taught musical theatre here for three hundred years, retired, and now refuses to go gently into the ether of assisted living. Instead he wanders in every Tuesday and Thursday, locks himself into his office and cranks Brigadoon until his 11.30 soup break. After soup he blasts the The Fantastiks until exactly 4, locks up and makes his way to the train. Now here’s a fact about Leo Papadakis: He was the stage manager for the The Fantastiks the night it opened at the Sullivan St. Theatre in New York, with Jerry Orbach as el Gallo. This is all anyone seems to know about Leo. He retired so long ago that no-one on the faculty knew him as an active teacher. All anyone ever says about him is: “You know, Leo was the stage manager for The Fantastiks the night it opened at the Sullivan St. Theatre in New York, with Jerry Orbach as el Gallo.” But his grizzled appearance placates the intergenerational types who are convinced that senility is just wisdom in search of order.