Dale Richards currently teaches College Writing I and II and Freshman Honors Colloquium for Kent State University. He is also Emeritus Associate Vice President, having retired from Kent State in 2005 after thirty years of administrative service. He lives in Kent, Ohio with Marylee, his wife of 45 years. Marylee is a former preschool teacher. Their three children live and work in Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Cleveland with their partners and children.
I get my primary kicks working with students who are willing to work on their own development as writers and thinkers. People learn by doing. Most effective educational settings enable learners to experiment by doing without high stakes. That is, the consequences from making a mistake are small, as are the extrinsic rewards and punishment. I don’t use grades as motivation but as an indicator to students how they are performing compared to expectations. Students for whom a grade is the principal motivation tend not to experiment or take risks. They are averse to failure. I want my students to welcome the kind of failure that follows concerted effort, because this is the only way we really learn.
The most meaningful jobs I do are designing learning activities that will stretch students, finding ways to engage students in those activities, and responding to their work as an interested peer, not as an authority sitting in judgment over them or their work products.
You can check out my personal blog started May 4, 2021 here.
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