Everyone remembers their favorite teachers. What we often can’t remember are the exact moments that left such a fond impression on us.

And while good teachers help us understand their subject, the absolute best of them help us think differently about the world.

A strange thing was happening in his class

Years ago, Joseph Fasano, a poet, writer, and author, was teaching an introductory college course on composition, writing, and critical thinking. By all appearances, he was crushing it.

“One semester I thought [my students] were just really focused on taking notes,” he wrote in a recent Instagram post, noticing that the students were spending an awful lot of time scrawling in their notebooks.

He wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t the material in his lectures they were paying attention to. They weren’t diligently taking notes just to pass an exam.

“Turns out they were compiling a book of all the slightly unhinged things I’d said. It’s 152 pages long,” he wrote.

As an author and poet, Fasano has more than a way with words. He has a way of capturing essential truths and........

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