Episode no. Season 3
Episode 37 Written by Rod Serling Production code 4835 | Directed by Robert Ellis Miller Featured music Stock Original air date June 1, 1962 | |
"The Changing of the Guard" is the 102nd episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.
Plot
Professor Ellis Fowler is an elderly English literature teacher at a boys' prep school in Vermont, who is forced into retirement after teaching for more than 50 years at the school. Looking through his old yearbooks and reminiscing about his former students, he becomes convinced that all of his lessons have been in vain and that he has accomplished nothing with his life.
Deeply depressed, he prepares to kill himself on the night of Christmas Eve next to a statue of the famous educator Horace Mann. Before he can follow through, however, he is called back to his classroom by a phantom bell, where he is visited by ghosts of several boys who were his students, all dead, some of whom died heroically. The boys each tell him that he inspired them to become better men. Deeply moved, Fowler accepts his retirement, content that his life is fuller for having enriched the lives of the boys.