Final Office Hours

I had to move out of my office on Stanford’s campus. I had retired from the Graduate School of Education in 2001 and since GSE had allotted offices in one of the two education buildings on campus for retired professors who, like myself, were located in Cubberley (named after a long-tenured dean and benefactor), I had to move from room 126 that I had had for over a decade. In 126, I had met with many students, some were in my classes and some were advisees working on their masters’ theses and doctoral dissertations. The importance of office hours in my 20-year career as a professor After a quarter-century of work in public schools as a teacher and district administrator, I had come to the GSE in 1981. Being a tenured professor is a privileged position. Compared to being a high school teacher with five daily classes of 50-minutes each, I found the teaching load at Stanford light. I only had to teach four courses over a nine month academic year. For each course, I met students twice a…