I’m boarding a plane to Los Angeles today for a mix of business and pleasure, and it feels like a last summer hurrah. Though I won’t be heading back to a classroom soon, I still love the sense of renewal August brings as summer fades and school begins again.

Earlier this month, I had the honor of speaking with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames about his new teaching position at Columbia University, and it made me want to enroll and get some fresh notebooks.

Ijames spent the past decade teaching acting at Villanova, a full-time position that enabled him to expand his creative life. “That teaching position allowed me to really shift my focus, my artistic practice, to playwriting in a really intentional way,” says Ijames. Now, the multihyphenate is broadening his role as an educator to include writing. He’ll be teaching a rewriting course and a class on contemporary American plays this fall at Columbia.

“I love the tumble of theatre—that there’s so many people that are required to make it,” Ijames said. “I like the learning environment for theatremakers to have that kind of oil to it, you know? It’s got energy, it’s not so siloed that things are clashing, and the students are intersecting in really purposeful and interesting ways. I thought that Columbia was a place that already has some of that infrastructure.”

Coming from a family of educators, Ijames credits many teachers with shaping his journey as an artist, most notably Carol Mitchell-Leon, who directed him in Once On This Island, the production that solidified his path in the theatre. “She is the one who taught me that a big part of what you do as a professor is that you believe in your students—even when they’re aggravating you, even when they’re being entitled, even when they’re all the things that come with youth. You have to believe in them.”

Building on the lessons of his own teachers, I asked James what he hopes will stay with his students long after they leave his classroom. “That I required them to think deeply, speak in draft, and to really cultivate the great courage that it takes to be compassionate.”

Speaking of impactful educators, I had the privilege of spending a day with arts administrators and teaching artists at Lincoln Center Theater’s convening for multilingual educators earlier this year. You can read more about the experience here.

Wishing all you educators the best as you gear up to return to new and familiar classrooms.