Dr. Richard Kent (ME '93)

Associate Professor of Literacy

University of Maine
Orono, ME

At the time of the Award, Dr. Richard Kent was:

Teacher
Mountain Valley High School
Rumford, ME

http://umaine.edu/edhd/faculty-staff/kent/

Subject(s) taught:

Biographical Information

After 21 years of teaching, coaching, and directing a writing center in Rumford, Maine, Rich packed his bags for Los Angeles to pursue a PhD at the Claremont Graduate University. He then served as a secondary school administrator in Maine for two years before joining the faculty at The University of Maine where he serves as the site director for the National Writing Project's Maine Writing Project. By his own admission, Dr. Kent is "interested in everything." Before becoming a teacher of English at Mountain Valley High School in Rumford, he spent three years as a police officer, four years as a university English instructor, and eight weeks as a kindergarten substitute teacher. He also attended Army boot camp, seriously pursued his passion for soccer in England and in Brazil, lectured at colleges throughout the United States, and wrote nine books, three of which are published. Dr. Kent shared, "I would like school to be open from early morning until late at night. I would like to see the physicist and the poet studying with the bricklayer and the logger. My dream for school is to have ten-year-olds working with seventy-year-olds." His mother, herself a teacher, showed him that the teaching life is one of celebration; Dr. Kent is living that legacy to the hilt.

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