Judging from his curriculum vitae — 19 books and hundreds of essays in print, a masters and doctorate in English from Princeton, another masters degree from Cambridge — Sam Pickering GS '70 '85 has entered the rarefied league of academic and literary greats. It turns out he is also a brilliant conversationalist on the topics of teaching kids, writing books and eating earthworms.
Pickering, the inspiration for the 1989 movie "Dead Poets Society," remains both humble and good-humored. His response to being interviewed was a teasing, "You must really be getting to the bottom of the barrel."
It is hard to tell which is his greater passion: teaching, an over-30-year love affair, or writing, for which he has gained membership in the prestigious Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Today, Pickering is an English professor at the University of Connecticut, where his teaching has a rare way of stirring enthusiasm.
Peculiar pedagogy
"The key thing about being a teacher is you have to like people. If you think the best of people, than they will give you the best," Pickering said.
His unique teaching style was the spark that led his former student Tom Schulman to screen-write the critically-acclaimed movie, "Dead Poets Society." Though Pickering unassumingly asserts that he is just a mustard seed of the main character, the brilliant eccentricities and engaging stories of Robin Williams' on-screen character are no coincidence.
So does he really climb on top of desks and trash cans, or teach from outside the window, the way Williams does in the movie?
Pickering set out to explain his curious approach to pedagogy.
"Here's the thing. If you are teaching 15-year-olds, you have to entertain yourself," he said. "You have a little fun and keep them awake."
But his fun is not of the ordinary sort. He once brought the head of a dead loon into class, and his classroom has such props as bones he found on nature walks.
"What teachers should do is make themselves interesting," he notes.
For him, a good student is a little harder to define.
He tells the story of a conference he attended where teachers were asked to write down characteristics of a good student. Pickering took a card and jokingly wrote down "Naked."
He said that teachers have no way of knowing who the best student is.
"The best student may be the girl who raises her grade from a C to a C+," Pickering said. "She may be disorderly, but she is interesting because of it."
He added, "There is great pressure to be ordered in society...maybe that's the wrong idea. Maybe you should be outdoors eating earthworms."
'Doing what I want to do'
Writing is still a way of life for Pickering. He is now working on a collection of essays entitled "Happy Days" and a book called "Edinburgh Days: Doing What I Want to Do."
The idea for the book was born while spending this past summer in Edinburgh, Scotland.
"I was in a museum," he recalled. "I went out and sketched the ugliest chair I have ever seen."
When a guard asked what he was doing, Pickering replied, "I am doing what I want to do."
The guard quipped, "You're a laddie who will always do what he wants to do."
Subsequently, Pickering made considerable progress on the book, writing 80,000 words.
"I think, quite frankly, 'Edinburgh Days' is the best thing I have ever written. So it will never be published," he joked.
In describing his writing process, Pickering said, "A lot of it seems spontaneous. But it's not. I used to say for every hour of writing, I put in three to four hours of planning. That's not true anymore. But I do plan out carefully and take a lot of notes."
Old bores, new stories
Indeed, Pickering seems to be a very cautious individual in general.
"I am mama bear. I am a worrier. I pay for two medical plans. I can't explain it," he said.
Pickering has been married to his wife, Vicki, for 26 years. Her father was his English professor at Princeton. The couple has three children: a son who graduated from Princeton, another son who graduated from Yale, and a daughter who is currently a junior at Harvard.
Over the years, Pickering has been offered numerous other job offers, including running for a seat in Congress. "The Republicans wanted me to run even though I was more liberal than Lenin!" he exclaimed.
Pickering is an optimist, even when it comes to aging. "The nice thing about old age is memory loss. Old bores become interesting, old stories become new again," he said.
When asked what he remembers most about being a student at Princeton he replied, "There were lots of nice people."
Then he added, "And things I'm not going to tell you about."
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