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NMH Magazine : Fall 2003

Work of Noble Note 

by Mary Seymour Photograph by Sharon La Bella-Lindale

Teachers are surely among the least sung heroes, imparting knowledge across decades and generations, eschewing wealth for the chance to enrich students’ minds. Every faculty member at NMH is a hero, although—in proper hero fashion—he or she might protest the term. Here we talk to one among the ranks, long-time English teacher Bill Batty ’59.

When Bill Batty came to teach at NMH in 1973, he was 30 years old and full of—well—himself. He’d come straight from the University of Oregon, where he’d done graduate studies in American literature and film. The star professor of Oregon’s English department, who’d added film studies to its curriculum, had anointed Batty his teaching assistant. At 27, Batty found himself teaching university classes on Eisenstein and Renoir. He’d even convinced the director of Rebel Without a Cause, Nick Ray, to visit the university and teach a class.

No question, Batty was a hotshot. 

Upon arrival, he retooled NMH’s fledgling film program and taught a course in film. He also taught sophomore English and coached two sports: boys basketball and boys track and field. In those salad days, he ran alongside the boys as he coached.

Batty has now put as many years into teaching at NMH as he’d lived when he arrived. His hair has whitened, his face developed crags, and both his knees are made of plastic and metal. He’s become an elder statesman of the English department: part lion, part lionized. Students still jockey to be in his classes and on his teams, thrilled at his ability to listen closely, never talk down, and see the unique worth in each of them. They’ve repeatedly given him the Students’ Choice Award; he won the honor again in May 2003.

He’s still a hotshot. But he’s humble, very humble. He no longer keeps up with the boys on the basketball court, and he most certainly doesn’t think of himself as a hero. He likens the intangibility of what he does to what Justice Learned Hand said of his courtroom career: “It felt like I was shoveling smoke.” The reward, Batty points out, is in the work itself. The rest is smoke.

NMH has exerted a centrifugal pull on Batty all his life. As a boy, he heard stories about Mount Hermon from his father, a member of the class of ’31. Batty came to Mount Hermon as a freshman in 1955, and his brothers Jerry and Stephen soon followed. Batty’s children, Mary ’84, Rocky ’86, and John ’88, all attended NMH, and his wife, Linda, has worked here as librarian and archivist for 30 years.

What was your childhood like?
I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, with two younger brothers. Neither of my parents graduated from college, although my father went to Mount Hermon, then went on to become a salesman and vice president of Standard Nut & Bolt. I went to a private Quaker school in Providence. I was a good student—not great. I thought I was very cool. I used to walk around the east side of Providence smoking and wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket and green suede shoes.

Which Hermon teachers inspired you?
Jud Stent was one. He had a passion for what he was teaching. Early on in his Bible class, I called my father and said, “This man has wrecked all my religious beliefs. I want to come home.” I’m sure I’d gotten a 30 on his test.

Rudolph Weber was the same way—absolutely committed to teaching French. He also made an impression. When he said, “If you don’t answer this right, I’ll throw you out the window,” you lived in a degree of fear.

Tommy Donovan was a powerful force. He was convinced you had to understand English—you needed it for your life; it wasn’t about getting into college or being socially acceptable.

Vit Piscuskas was a great role model and coach. To our teenage eyes, the mystery was: He could go out in the world and do whatever he wanted to do. Why was he here?

Did you have any transforming moments at Mount Hermon?
Jervis Burdick, who was dean of students, selected me to be a student leader. I was still on the cusp of bad boy-good boy, and the fact he’d picked me meant a great deal. Then I got in trouble for leaving campus without permission. Typically you’d get dumped as student leader if you got in trouble. Jervis had me in and said, “I really want you to be my student leader. I know you got in trouble, but I’m going to stick by you.” That was the pivotal experience of my time at Mount Hermon. He conveyed that he saw something of worth in me.

What were you like by the time you graduated?
I was much too serious. I was running between classes to try and gain more time. I wanted to go to Brown in the worst way and knew I had to get good grades to do it.
When I got to Brown, I met with my advisor, Charlie Doebler, the director of admission, and told him how serious and purposeful I was. He looked at me and said, “Bill, I have one piece of advice. Take a nap every afternoon.” So I went back to my room and lay in bed and stared at the ceiling for an hour.

When did you realize you wanted to teach?
Probably at the back of my head I realized it in college. I wanted to be able to spend the rest of my life reading and working with kids.

Did your parents encourage you to be a teacher?
My maternal grandfather was chief of surgery at Rhode Island Hospital, and I think in some ways my family always thought I should be a doctor. I was never going to do that. But I’ve often thought about what it’s like to be a doctor in that, when I’ve had a bad class, I say, “Well, everybody’s alive.”

What did you do after graduating from Brown?
I went to Europe and stayed for a few months. When Igot back, I enrolled in the MAT program at Rhode Island College. Then, at 22, I got my first job: assistant to Howard Jones, president of Northfield and Mount Hermon. The schools were in the midst of a capital campaign, so I spent 18 months traveling the country to raise money.

After that I did practice teaching at Cranston High School in Rhode Island and got my MAT. I married Linda, whom I’d met at Brown while I was an undergraduate and she was a grad student. I took a job in the admissions office at Brown, but then I decided to go to grad school again—this time in a PhD program at the University of Oregon.

What teaching did you do at the University of Oregon?
First I got a job working for Upward Bound at the university. Then I worked with Project 75, in which I taught 75 black kids who’d been picked to attend the university. The best student I’ve ever had was in this group. She was from the Georgia Sea Islands and spoke Gullah. She had remarkable stories to tell and was willing to tell them in her own voice.

Then I became teaching assistant to Bill Cadbury, who was probably the most distinguished English scholar at the university. It was exciting, heady stuff.

Why did you come back to NMH?
Howard Jones offered me the job. I loved New England and wanted to come back and be close to my family. I liked NMH and thought if I came here, I’d have the chance to do a lot of different things.

How do you stay fresh as a teacher?
Because the kids are always fresh. And they make incredible progress. That age period is such a time of change: you could be locked up in a cell from age 14 to 18 and still change.

Describe a favorite teaching moment.
I worked with a kid who was having trouble with writing. I met with him every week and talked and talked to him, but he just wasn’t getting it. Finally one day he got it and wrote a much better paper. He came in and I said, “This is a breakthrough for you. I’ve been telling you this from the start of the year. For my sake, tell me—what did I say that made you finally get it?” He said, “Mr. Batty, it had nothing to do with you. Mr. Fleck told me this a year ago in English class, but I never listened to him. Finally I figured out what Mr. Fleck was saying, and that’s why I was able to write this paper.”

My point is that educating a student takes a village. It goes against some things in my own egotistical self—we like to think, “This is my kid and now he does it right because I taught this.” The fact of the matter is, you can’t do it by yourself.

What has coaching taught you?
For one thing, it’s taught me a lot about sexism. If people talked about me, I bet they’d say he’s the head boys basketball coach, not the head girls track-and-field coach. I’ve had infinitely more success in track and field—we’ve had 12 New England championships. In all the years I’ve been here, the boys basketball team has never won the New Englands. But people remember the basketball. I take the girls every bit as seriously as the boys, but I have to make an effort to help them understand that.

Is good teaching a learned skill?
That’s what I find strange about teaching: You do learn the tricks of the trade over time. However, the school could hire someone fresh out of college, and that person could come in and be an incredible teacher right off the bat.

What are you teaching this year?
This fall I’m teaching senior English. The books include Philip Levine’s The Mercy, Michael Chabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Joyce Carol Oates’s Foxfire, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In the spring I’ll be teaching ninth-grade humanities with Ginny Brooks. I love the collegiality of teaching with another person. At the same time, I’m thankful I have the senior English course, which I basically get to create and teach the way I see fit.

What advice would you offer a teacher just starting out?
Be true to your field and care about your discipline—but not at the expense of your kids. And the opposite holds true: you can’t care about your kids to the complete detriment of your discipline. Also, get the papers back the next day.

What’s a major challenge of teaching?
Providing an atmosphere where kids can really say what’s on their minds and be honest. That’s an ongoing challenge. Also you’ve got to remember: you can’t turn these kids into something for you, something you want them to be. You’ve got to be an honest broker.

Does any aspect of teaching intimidate you?
Parent Days are the most frightening days for me. You’re reminded that here’s this kid who’s come 3,000 or 10,000 miles—and his or her parents have entrusted the most precious thing in the world to you and to NMH. If I thought about that every day, I probably couldn’t teach.

Do you have retirement plans?
Read the last couple lines of Tennyson’s Ulysses. I don’t want to ever retire. But I’m sure I don’t want to stay at NMH into my dotage. I’ve stayed here a long time. I’ll keep teaching, one way or another. And I’d like to write a book.

What has NMH given you?
Scott Momaday in Way to Rainy Mountain talks about picking a place, looking at it, getting to know it in many different lights—morning, noon, evening. What NMH has given me is a focal point. I’ve seen it differently as a small child, as a teenager, as a man, as an older man. It’s been my home; 
my kids have gone to school here; I went to school here. That’s a lot.

What have you given NMH?
I’ve given it my serious intelligence. I absolutely think it’s worthy of my best efforts, so that’s what I’ve given.