Editor’s Note: This week, an icon in Moapa Valley education is finishing his final semester of teaching. Mr. Ron Dalley is retiring…….again. He has taught generations of students in the Moapa Valley as a legendary high school english/literature/drama/debate teacher; and more recently as a notoriously difficult college writing professor. No doubt, many tributes have been made to Mr. Dalley over the years. But we thought it would be interesting to view this educator through the eyes of two former students who happen to occupy opposite ends of Mr. Dalley’s five decades of service. We feel these two viewpoints make a fitting tribute to Mr. Dalley’s efforts in the diligent instruction of Moapa Valley students.
Early Days
By Ace Robison
MVHS Graduate, Class of 1961
I was a sophomore at Moapa Valley High when Mr. Dalley taught his first generation of Moapa Valley-ites. The year was 1958 and the girls were all beautiful, real men wore “ag jackets”, cars were all big and fast (some bigger and faster than others), Mom’s Café was the happening place in town, and Moapa Valley was the center of our universe.
Mr. Dalley, with his eternally boyish face, didn’t look much older than most of us and, in fact, he wasn’t. After graduating from Moapa Valley High (as President of the Student Council) he went off to BYU from which Mr. Bowler hired him the minute he graduated as a “wet-behind-the-ears” English teacher. Those were not easy times for his not-much-younger brothers Bernell and Bevan who, like the rest of us, had to call him MISTER Dalley.
He was a fine English teacher but he never could teach me to properly diagram a sentence (for you youngsters, diagramming is an ancient and archaic art, long since lost, but required in our more enlightened time).
Truly it was destiny that called him, with his tiny Morris Minor car, to teach at Moapa Valley High his many generations of students the difference between nouns and verbs and adjectives and prepositions and the use of proper syntax in constructing a meaningful sentence, not to mention teaching them the enjoyment of excellent literature and poetry.
But it was in teaching drama, debate and oratory where he really excelled. I was among his early protégés in those arts and, while I never excelled in sports, I did in debate, oratory and drama. I suppose I’ll never forget the memories of my well coached and carefully rehearsed American Legion oration that would have won hands down but for the fact that as I approached the last lines my mind went blank. I stammered to a conclusion but the judges knew I had blown it. Or the opening night of “Charley’s Aunt” when the scene called for Bevan to hide under a borrowed table (an antique graciously loaned us by Sharon Jensen’s grandma) only to find that he was in the company, under the tablecloth, of a very large Black Widow spider. Courageous to the end, Bevan stayed in character and made place for both of them until the scene called for him to emerge, which he gladly did. Or the school assembly in which Mr. Dalley, during those less politically sensitive days, coached Sharon Jensen and Jerry Hutchings on how to smear my face evenly with “blackface” so I could sing “Old Man River” in proper character (I still can’t believe I let them do that but I never could say no to those girls). Or Mr. Dalley’s great pride as my worthy debate partner David Waymire and I won the Nevada State Forensics and Debate Championship in Reno. Or the time, during a late play practice, when he was deeply engrossed in rehearsal in the auditorium, and a group of us, led by Ben Robison I’m sure, rolled his tiny little Morris Minor through the front doors of the old school, down the hall and around the corner where we hid it in the north entry. (He took it all in pretty good humor as I recall.)
I suppose my happiest recollections of good old Moapa Valley High are those of late night play practices, hard work expended on debate strategies and tactics intended to destroy opponents, or memorizing, practicing, and delivering well worded orations. Mr. Dalley is constant among those memories. He has truly earned his place in the legend and lore of Moapa Valley High School and I am honored to be among his earliest students and devotees.
The Final Semester
By Jessica Robison
MVHS Senior Class of 2011 (& Grand-daughter of Ace Robison)
Last year, my junior year of high school, I began hearing a stream of complaints and rumors from my peers. These horror stories seemed to revolve around the infamous dual-credit CSN English professor, Mr. Dalley. At that time, the few students in my grade, brave enough to have ventured through his classroom door, often returned to the high school pale and depressed. The word was that it was practically impossible to get a good grade in Mr. Dalley’s class. His quizzes were said to be excruciatingly difficult. And any attempt at bribery was futile.
A friend of mine actually showed me the startling results of her first essay in the class, shortly before she dropped the course. The once clean, white sheet of paper with neat black letters had been transformed into a mess of red scribbles. It looked like Mr. Dalley had fought a war with her paper; maybe shooting it a couple of times with a red paintball gun for good measure; before returning it to her.
Fearing unnecessary damage to my own Grade Point Average, I quietly decided to steer clear of Mr. Dalley’s class. Fortunately, my dad encouraged (here read ‘pressured’) me to take on the Dalley challenge. It took several days of his cajoling, but eventually I gave in and enrolled to take the class this semester.
All through last summer, my anxiety grew. As summer drew to a close, a constant cloud of dread seemed to hang over my head in anticipation of starting this feared English class about which I had heard so many troubling things.
On the first day of attending Mr. Dalley’s class I immediately feared that I had made a serious mistake. As the intimidating load of expectations for the course began to be revealed I worried that I would never be able to keep up. But if taking the class was a mistake, it was one that has provided me with more knowledge and ability than all of my previous English classes combined.
Mr. Dalley’s class forced me to take a huge step out of my comfort zone. For almost every day of the first quarter, he followed an unnerving but effective technique to help us learn the material. He would hand out a large packet filled with error-pocked sentences. He would point up and down the rows, having each student read a sentence and fix it in front of the entire class. Of course, it was an enormous class (by MVHS standards, anyway). There were no empty seats and on most days, some people had to actually share desks. To get a question wrong in such a large class would be absolutely humiliating to me. So the pressure was intense.
In a panic, I would quickly count down the rows and calculate which sentence would be mine. Once I found it, I would speedily review my notes, hoping and praying that the answer I gave would be the right one. Much of the material that really sunk in during this class came from those moments of panic.
As the material became more difficult, some of my classmates would make mistakes in their answers. In these times, Mr. Dalley seemed to enjoy playing up his role of scary college professor. He would give stern looks, shake his head, and then make these unfortunate errors into examples for the rest of the class.
The first time I answered incorrectly, I braced myself for the worst. But the instruction which followed was effective and not nearly as painful as I feared it would be.
My opinion of Mr. Dalley completely changed that day. I realized that he was not trying to make our lives miserable. He was doing his job of teaching us to write. And he was doing it with all that he had and like no one else could.
The past semester in Mr. Dalley’s class has been invaluable to my education. My vocabulary has improved as has my understanding of sentence structure, editing, and writing. I feel that the class has brought me a long way in preparing for college and the writing that will be required there.
Yes, this class has been a fearful challenge. But my papers now come back to me with only a few markings and comments on them, rather than a tornado of red ink. And my quiz grades have also improved.
I am grateful that I was able to learn from Mr. Dalley during this, his last semester teaching. I may never have a better, more-experienced English teacher. Mr. Dalley’s lessons will, no doubt, remain with me well into college, and for the rest of my life.
