The Residential School Teacher's Life
A day with History Instructor Nolan Lincoln
By Jennifer Wagner
Photography by Christian Harrison
Fall 2026
In April 1956, The Exeter Bulletin published “Greener Grows the Grass,” a thoughtful essay written by English Instructor John B. Heath on the life of an Exeter teacher. Heath illuminated the complexities of the job and the many roles our instructors play in and out of the classroom: a teacher, of course, but also an adviser, a coach, a dean, a parent and so much more.
More than 70 years later, Heath’s description, while needing to be updated to include women and girls, still holds. To honor the work of our faculty, we spent a September day with Nolan Lincoln. He teaches history, is dorm head in Wentworth Hall, coaches varsity soccer, serves as assistant dean of community life and, with his wife, Christy, is raising two children. Here is a day in his life.
08:15 Family walk to drop kids at school and daycare
To explain what a teacher at Exeter does, English Instructor John Heath wrote in 1956, one would have to show “that he is human, though sometimes his students and those other preoccupations, his children, do not seem to realize it — human in the sense of needing, like everyone else, a reasonable compromise between work and play, routine and variety, job and family, frustration and achievement, obscurity and recognition. If you tickle him, he laughs; if you prick him, he bleeds.”
08:55 Grab coffee, check email, grade papers
09:28 Meet with Dean Matt Hartnett
11:03 Teach History class
“His main concern, of course,” Heath wrote in 1956, “is his classroom teaching. ... When a class is just right — the boys are attentive; no one, not even the teacher, looks surreptitiously at his wristwatch; even the silent member of the class has something to say; the illustrative joke gets more than a polite laugh; the bell rings unnoticed, the boys, excused, do not bolt, but leave slowly and perhaps reluctantly — he is sure that there is no better way to make a living.”
2:58 After lunch, walk daughter home from school
3:43 Sneak in a quick workout
05:16 Coach soccer practice
“The teacher at Exeter probably coaches,” Heath wrote in 1956. “He may coach dramatics, for instance, or debating, or riflery. If he is interested in athletics — interest is more valuable than skill — he coaches, say, club soccer in the fall, and club baseball in the spring. He finds that coaching four afternoons a week takes time, and occasionally he prays for rain; but ordinarily he finds that the time is well spent. It gives him a regular chance for exercise, or, if he is feeling old, at least for some fresh air. It gives him a chance to see the boys, and the boys a chance to see him, outside the classroom. It gives him a chance to do a different kind of teaching. Even if he takes his coaching very seriously it gives him a kind of comic relief from the pressures of his dormitory and classroom. Probably his worrying about how to break a three-game losing streak, or whether to use Strongarm as pitcher or shortstop, has the therapeutic value of relieving his anxiety about Hollowhead’s chances of passing Latin.”
07:31 Dorm Duty in Wentworth Hall
“On duty officially every third or fourth night in the dormitory,” Heath wrote in 1956, “he checks the boys in and sees that they keep reasonably quiet, do a reasonable amount of studying, and go to bed reasonably early, so that he can too. During an evening on duty he will probably fetch one boy to the telephone for a call from home, try to solve one tank-emptying algebra problem, ask one boy on the fourth floor to stop bouncing his lacrosse ball, give one boy library permission to study history and another boy late permission to finish his Latin, and tell one Lower Middler at ten-thirty-five to stop admiring himself in the bathroom mirror and go to bed.”
07:59 Back to apartment; prep for tomorrow
