If it was freshmen class, I am roughly guessing that the teacher was trying to train the students. A Harkness warrior may soon rein himself. But it’s harder to “encourage” students to start participating. Trying to rein him could give the rest a wrong message that the teacher couldn’t afford, even on the revisit day.
It actually wasn’t a freshman class and even if it was, I’d argue that a student with Harkness Warrior tendencies should have been redirected by April. I chose to attend a class for 11th graders if I recollect correctly. My guess is perhaps kids weren’t prepared and the teacher was happy someone was talking. 
I was used to small, discussion based classes around a table for humanities both from my own education and from my older child’s education but it was a contrast to see how completely hands off this teacher was during that class. Very, very little directing of the discussion. But, its hard to judge from just one experience so I’m glad the OP was able to go back for another day to see if the fit was right.
Wow I am glad your son got a 2nd revisit and liked it this time! Wishing him all the best!
Way to go, @Lolalou! Congratulations to you and your son!
My daughter had great revisit days with her #1 school and another school. My revisit was another story. #1 was excellent but not enough FA. The other school, I was very impressed with but our tour guide was clearly unhappy and voiced his opinions about some changes that the school was making. This left a bad taste in my mouth (not about the school but about their method of choosing guides). In addition, I also had a conversation with a staff member who appeared to be attempting to discourage us from enrolling our child. The entire time it appeared that he was looking around to see if anyone was listening. It could also be my imagination but it also appeared that other staff members were lurking about trying to hear what he was telling us. In the end he gave my husband his card in the event that we had more questions. I will never call him. It appeared that he was very bitter about something. This spoke volumes to me about his character and his attempts to sabotage a day intended to give prospective families a positive view of the school. To make a long story short, these 2 individuals did not discourage my interest in the school. There will always be unhappy individuals who will attempt to spread their germs. It’s up to us to be objective and make our own decisions not based on others opinions.
I don’t know. Maybe I would have to be there and see the dynamics but if more than one person were indicating concerns, that would raise a red flag in my mind I might want to look into. Plus, if others were concerned enough to be lurking about, why was that individual put in a position to be in front of families??
@lolalu so happy to hear that your son had such a different experience. I just took my kids to dinner in Exeter tonight and my daughter was so excited to get her revisit match today. She promptly sent her a welcome introduction email. She went on to tell me that she was shuttling friends prospective students to her classes the last few days. It is common practice for the kids to send their prospective students with friends to other classes that might interest them more. She was happy to make one student more comfortable about attending after a conversation on how difficult it is to keep your town friends as a day student (very easy for my daughter who is actually a boarder - in a choice town) and how difficult it is to make a sports team (depends on the sport of course - but all of ours have made teams being new to the sport). The girl was so relieved as others had told her the exact opposite views and she was pretty discouraged about hearing this. Unlike the tour guides in the fall, hosts have one brief meeting and are given a simple fact sheet and are on their own. Exeter really tries to give attendees a view of an average day- but the challenge is that many times it can just be a bad day for the host and therefore the prospective student sees this limited viewpoint.
Might be a scandal brewing. Just hasn’t hit the papers yet. Perhaps I have watched too much Law and Order.
@doschicos: I understand what you are saying but the student having concerns did not raise a red flag for me because I am raising my 3rd teenager now. They do not like change, but they do need to think about their audience when they voice their concerns. As for the adult staff member, my husband went to the school website and saw the same position posted for an August 2016 start date. Wondering if he was told that his services will no longer be needed after the semester ends.
@Sarrip I think it’s teenagers’ jobs to be disgruntled with “the man” sometimes. Good for you for seeing it for what it was.
@doschicos I know at Andover the regular class schedule for the host is not interrupted at all. Classes will go on exactly as scheduled, except that there will not be tests on revisit days. I don’t think it is on purpose, but it has the benefit of giving you are a more “real” look. This probably wouldn’t happen if classes were specially tailored to the revisits.
My reaction to the OP was the same as Soxmom, that sprinkled in with some significant 2nd guessing about the school itself, it appears he might also be 2nd guessing his resolve to make such a big leap. Sometimes we forget what a huge deal it is for these kids to risk trading in the known for the unknown.
@Sarrip That is interesting. At our revisit, a parent volunteer asked us whereelse we were revisiting and then he spent most of time sort of lite “badmouthing” the other school and tried to convince us to choose them. We chose another school but we weren’t influenced either way.
Loyalty gone bad. :))
Or disloyalty gone bad in your case.
@payn4ward: Lol…we actually chose the school where the disloyalty went bad and we are super excited about it! I am wondering how many people are swayed by these types of situations.
Alas, I had a somewhat similar experience yesterday.