PELLA -- Harry Smith's view was very different, and rather intimidating at first, from the front of the classroom.
The retired national television journalist, a 1973 Central College graduate and now 73, returned to his alma mater this fall to teach a seminar titled "Commencement: The Beginning." But the goal really was to spark curiosity, something he said his liberal arts education fostered.
"The initial idea was 'Commencement,' because everybody thinks of commencement as the end, but this is really about the beginning," he told The Gazette by phone last spring, after his return to Central was announced. "Curiosity ends up driving the heart of this (class). My whole thought is as these young people get ready to leave, starting with curiosity and listening, and empathy, and mindfulness without meditation, and resilience and adaptability -- those are the things we're going to be talking about for eight weeks."
He's been back on the Pella campus many times over the years, serving on boards and attending events. He's also taught some writing classes for junior hires at NBC-TV. But nothing really prepared him for this latest gig, which began the day after Labor Day and ran through October.
The Gazette caught up with him Oct. 23 over lunch in Pella, to see how it went.
"I was afraid," he said about initially stepping into the classroom as the instructor, not a student. "I had some anxiety about it, because it's one thing to think, 'Well, I can do this.' It's another thing to think, 'I can do this, and I prepared for this.' And it's another thing altogether that first day.
"I went and I told then why I'm here .." he said. "I've watched people's focus become more and more narrow, and in the end of the day, our world is changing so quickly, that may not be the best route to take.
"I took a million different courses when I was here from a lot of different disciplines, and that served me unbelievably well in my life as a reporter. We know this for a fact: Half of you will never work in the field you're studying. Half. Just know that going on. Some people have said people who graduate now will work in three completely different fields, and everybody's going to have a dozen jobs. ...
"So in the words of Ron Burgundy in that famous documentary, not a comedy, 'Anchorman,' you have to have your head on a swivel. ...
"So I explained why I was here, then I said, 'Why are you here?' Because no 20-year-old in the United States of America has ever watched a national broadcast of a news program today, or the nightly news, or anything like that."
Turns out, their parents told them, " 'If Harry Smith is teaching a class at Central, you'd better take it.' And if their parents didn't say it, their grandparents did," Smith added.
True to form, he said none of the 25 juniors and seniors knew who he was. "Zero," he said. But now they do.
The seminar met for nearly two hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Students received two credits and were graded on a pass/fail system. That was fine with him, since he was more interested in their classroom participation, which he made mandatory in the catalog description.
"Anybody who came in needed to know that they were going to be called on no matter what," he said, adding that he "told them in no uncertain terms" that just sitting there was not going to cut it.
He also made them leave their electronic devices at home. They would need them outside of class to prepare for the next session, but just pencils and papers were allowed in the classroom. "And when I said it, nobody cared."
The first day, he showed them a clip from "Ted Lasso," a multiple-award-winning sports comedy/drama series that aired on Apple TV+. The takeaway was to "be curious, not judgmental," illustrated when the main character was challenged to make three seemingly impossible shots on a pub dart board. The stakes were high, and everyone expected him to miss. But Lasso hit them all, because from age 10 on, his father took him to a sports bar every Sunday afternoon, where he honed his dart-throwing skills. Before issuing the challenge, no one thought to ask him if he actually played darts. They had skipped the curiosity part and rushed right to judgment.
Most of the students had seen that clip before. Then Smith asked how many had heard of Walt Whitman. A couple hands went up, so their assignment was to go home, find a Walt Whitman poem, then choose a stanza to read to the class, and explain why they chose it.
"They absolutely crushed it," Smith said. "From then on, it was like, 'OK, you guys have come to play.' I stood there at the end of the class with my hands this far apart. I said my heart was this big. I shook their hands as they walked out of the class."
Time and again, the students taught the teacher.
"It's humbling," he said. "I have a certain amount of anxiety ahead of every class, and I never know from class to class what they may grasp onto or what they might find interesting or even profound. You just don't know. I don't know. And so I find myself preparing a lot more than I think I was going to need to, because I really need to. I mean, there's something that I think 'this is the best part of this,' and I start drilling down, and they're looking at me like you're from outer space. But they always come prepared."
He was especially impressed with one student who "pulled five things he liked" out of a controversial piece the student didn't much care for.
"I'm learning from them that these kids can and do discern," Smith said. "And so after a class, I dropped the mic and said, 'My job is done. You guys are good to go.' "
His friend and former colleague Andy Cohen was equally impressed. When Cohen found out Smith would be retiring and teaching this class, he offered to be a guest speaker via Zoom.
When Smith told his students they'd be speaking with Cohen, some knew who he was, others didn't. "I said, 'Your assignment is to really find out who this guy is.'"
Smith was nervous that some of the questions would be superficial, dealing with Cohen's "Real Housewives" series content. But Smith decided not to ask about the students' questions before connecting them with Cohen, a producer, writer and talk show host.
He told them, "This is yours," and turned the session over to them. "Every question was good," he said. They asked about Cohen's career trajectory, what things frustrated him, and what it was like to become a father later in life. It was so good."
Cohen was impressed, too. "As soon as the class is over, Andy shoots me a text. He says, 'That got deep fast.'"
Smith was hoping the class would be "a virus they all would catch," pushing students toward mindfulness, how to know a person, how to listen, what their posture would mean. "All of these kinds of things that I think enhance life, period, but will just make you that much better as a professional," he said.
He feels the virus had caught on, just as he had hoped.
He also feels students today are smarter than when he was in school.
Regardless of the career path today's young people are preparing for, whether it's through college or learning the trades, those he's seeing in his class "are hungry for something different," he said. "They come and they're expecting something different. But part of the class is, 'watch out -- it may not be what you expect.'"
He's been surprised at his reactions and the tug at his heart he was feeling as the seminar was winding down.
"A given student will have a response that I may not expect. ... It just lights me up. It gets me here in my chest. I mean, it gets me here too," he said, pointing to his head, "but it really gets me here" in the heart.
"This class really meant a lot to me. I don't have very adequate words to describe that, but it is really meant a lot. I'm going to be in some crazy state of withdrawal when I get back to New York."
He's been staying in a renovated Airbnb above a garage just two blocks from the gym, the library and his classroom in the Roe Center, which houses Central's education, psychology and community-based learning programs.
His wife, sportscaster Andrea Joyce, just off the road from covering the Olympics and Paralympic Games in Paris, visited her husband in Pella and spoke to his students about career moves, expectations and harsh realities when things don't go as planned.
The couple didn't get to spend much time together in Paris, since she was working, and not much time together in Pella, either.
So as Smith looked toward returning to their New York City apartment, he said: "I'm going to pet my dog and kiss my wife. It's indeterminate who's more anxious to be served first."