The 102nd episode of “The Twilight Zone.” “The Changing of the Guard,” focuses on Professor Ellis Fowler, a gentle teacher facing retirement after 51 years at a boys’ prep school in Vermont. Thumbing through the pages of old yearbooks, he’s convinced his lessons have been disregarded, that he has given his students “nothing, nothing at all.” Discouraged, he stands at the base of a statue of legendary educator Horace Mann, considering the inscription: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
Last spring, a student in the graduating class at Cheshire Academy asked Philosophy and Literature Teacher Robert “Chip” Bovd P’98,10 to watch the episode. He wanted to explain how much being a student of Boyd’s — one of thousands in his 37 years on campus — had meant to him.
In June, three of the school’s longest-serving educator -— Boyd, Art Teacher François “Fran” Poisson, and History Teacher James “Butch” Rogers — will teach their last classes at CA. Upon retirement, they will have served a combined 93 years at Cheshire Academy. The trio, who have been colleagues and campus neighbors for decades, sat down in August to consider how they’ve changed the Academy and how it’s shaped their careers and their lives.
“When I started teaching here, I defined myself as an artist first and a teacher second.” said Poisson. “Over the vears. it’s flipped to where now I say I’m a teacher…and I say it proudly.”
Poisson studied art at Rhode Island School of Design and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. He worked for an industrial design company and then as an adjunct art professor at four colleges to make ends meet before switching gears to teach teenagers at Cheshire Academy.
“I needed a job,” Poisson joked of his initial reason for applying to the school. “But I love it. It’s about working with students and their ideas and their creative ideas and impulses and kind of growing with them as they develop. It’s very rewarding.”
Joining him on campus is his wife of 38 years, Patty Poisson, a fellow artist who will also be leaving her post as a trusted school nurse. The pair will retire to their summer home in Maine, where both will focus some of their time on their creative endeavors.
Rogers, who holds degrees from Connecticut College and Wesleyan University, came to Cheshire 32 years ago, after working in business and then in a public school setting.” had five classes, 30 kids in a class. You were just handed the curriculum. There was no chance for creativity,” he said.
“Here, it was much different. I could actually create my own classes. I was allowed to follow the path that I wanted, and that was important to me.”
He welcomed the idea of teaching history through sources that resonated with students — the art, music, and literature of the time. “It had nothing to do with names and dates and battles, but this idea that it had to do with understanding the past to understand the present,” he said.
After working in the mental health field for several years, Boyd decided to shift to the field of education. While completing a master’s program aimed at public school certification at the University of Bridgeport, he had a conversation with his sister, whose wise counsel he respects.
She mentioned an open teaching job at Cheshire that included a coaching gig. “I thought I would like to have a job teaching and coaching tennis,” he said with a smile. “And here I am.”
Boyd, whose wife is former theater teacher Shelley Taylor Boyd, said the life of working and living on a boarding school campus is sometimes difficult and downright exhausting, but ultimately very satisfying.
“In recent years, I’ve had a couple of philosophy classes that were great in that sense; the kids were really interested in exploring profound ideas about life and were into sharing something about themselves with everyone in the class,” Boyd said. “And that’s exciting. At such moments, I would teach for free because I enjoy it that much.”
Asked about their classes, the trio was hard pressed to characterize the typical CA student. It’s their differences and the challenge of connecting with them, they said, that keeps things interesting and fresh.
“We don’t have a cookie-cutter population,” said Rogers, who will be moving to Stonington after Commencement.
“We have to create multiple lesson plans to make sure all of our students succeed.”
The three teachers enjoy the variety of the curriculum. Ultimately though, each is using his own discipline to teach a universal subject — the importance and beauty of knowledge and comprehension itself.
“I want my students to be curious, but I want them to understand the value of knowledge — that dedicating yourself to the study of any of the arts or history or sciences, literature, philosophy — all of it is of great value and it can be a way of enhancing your experience of the world,” said Boyd, who earned his bachelor’s degree at Tufts University. “It’s a compensation for how frustrating and difficult the world can be that you can experience something really fascinating and exciting about the world at any time.”
While students might not share the same strengths, challenges, and passions when they come to Cheshire, Poisson said, “when they leave, there’s a spirit that the school has that travels with them.”
All three teachers said their decision to spend the bulk of their careers at Cheshire has changed them. For
Rogers, who began teaching in 1993, some of the changes are quite stark.
“In grad school, I did my thesis on a typewriter,” he joked.
“Some of it is finding new ways to relate the material. You’ve got to find new ways to reach (students) and make sure they’re relevant.”
All three have lived through many changes in CA leadership and appreciated the school’s enduring focus on student-centered learning, on finding and honoring the spark in the individual. In his Identity Project, Poisson has each student create a self-portrait, the first takes of which often include collage images of Taylor Swift or Disney World.
“I say, ‘how many people like Taylor Swift in this world?
Millions. How many people like Disney? Millions. So how are you an individual? You just said you’re one of a million people,” he said. “So they have to go back and do another one and that’s when it gets more interesting. They start revealing things about themselves and it becomes much more personal. The final step is to do this without any words in it, just with colors.
So what colors, put together, represent you?
“The reason we require students to take art is to develop their creative side. Knowing you’re capable of being creative. It’s not necessarily about talent. It’s curiosity and imagination.”
Imparting a love of learning and exploring creativity is a shared love of the retiring teachers. Each found it hard to pinpoint a particular novel, historical event, or artist he enjoys teaching most. As with everything, the students come first.
Rogers uses contemporary rock music to tap into the realities of the Vietnam era and Charles Dickens to teach the power shifts of the Industrial Revolution. “Dickens is someone who kids in high school can grasp,” he said. “We look at literature as much as we do the history book itself.”
Boyd recently added Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” to his reading list because he thinks the 200+-year-old novel still sparks spirited debate on many contemporary issues.
“I might love a book, but the kids don’t, and it’s just not happening. I’m careful about assuming something | love would be great for the kids,” he said. “I’m more deliberate with my interactions with kids. I’m much more intentional.
I’ve grown, certainly, in my profession.”
It’s those kinds of moments — students excitedly engaging
in discussion or the creative process — that all three teachers said they will miss deeply as they move beyond Cheshire’s campus. Poisson plans to focus on his own art, while both Boyd and Rogers said they might seek out less intense opportunities to continue teaching.
“That’s going to be a huge issue
for me,” said Rogers. “I’m going to miss this far more than I actually know. Because teaching is one of the few jobs where, you know, the kids are there, you close the door and it’s the little world that you all create, and you try to stimulate the minds, whatever you need to do. And…you have to work at it, but it’s a great life to teach.”
Boyd said he might teach adults or join a book group or two, but he will miss the community he’s found at Cheshire. “You can walk into the dining hall on any day and there’s groups of people I could sit down and start having an interesting conversation with about students or a book or an idea, politics or something. It’s a ready-made community of really interesting, communicative people, including the kids.
“And that’s not something that…” he paused. “Life’s not like that for most people. It’s a privilege and it’s constantly stimulating and I’m going to miss it for sure and I’m going to try to replace it in some ways…..with something.”
Rogers said he hopes he has left a legacy at Cheshire and in the lives of his own former students. “I would like to think that I was always honest with them. This idea of authenticity comes up a lot, but admitting when I’m wrong, making the class enjoyable, stimulating.”
Rogers’ wife Jeanne died after a long illness while they were living on campus. He and his two sons know firsthand how Cheshire cares for its community. “No matter how dark things ever got, the school was always there,” he said. “And I’ll never forget that.”
Poisson wants to be remembered as “a good guy,” and Cheshire as a solid place to grow up. “We evolve,” he said of the school. “We serve these kids well. We always do our best to do right by them. I think what’s kept me here is we do good work.”
Boyd, whose former student asked him to watch the bittersweet Twilight Zone episode, said he was touched to think back upon all the lives of which he’s been a part.
”Be ashamed to die before you have won some victory for humanity,” Boyd said,
quoting Mann a second time. “I would be honored to think people see me that way. That my student did. And I would love to think that other people felt that I communicate that spirit of contribution. Of contributing some small victories in the world.”
