Rich is a truly excellent teacher. He is able to communicate clearly the concepts of the acting technique to the class as a whole, while also being flexible and creative when personalizing it to an individual when they have questions or is struggling with a particular aspect.
He also does a great job of creating an environment of openness, safety, honesty, and mutual support. That starts with him as a teacher - he does not coddle people and does not bullshit with feedback - you know exactly what you are getting and that builds immediate and long-lasting trust. At the same time, honesty is delivered with grace and encouragement, never with maliciousness or manipulation.
Only a few classes into this level, one of the Repetition exercises escalated to a really emotionally charged and volatile state, which was painful to witness and be in the room for, possibly even more so as a bystander feeling like I didn't have agency to lower the temperature or respond differently to what was happening. Rich gave us time and space to breathe and quickly acknowledged that he had made a mistake letting the exercise continue on for too long. On top of that, at the beginning of the next class he spoke to us all and outlined explicitly boundaries or guardrails we could put in place for ourselves if we felt overwhelmed by something in the moment, and repeated that anyone for anyone reason could stop an exercise if they did not wish to continue.
In the end it was (for me at least) a small bump in the road during the process where our experienced and empathetic teacher owned up to a mistake, worked with the class to adjust, and did so in a way that was thoughtful and helped foster an even closer atmosphere as a group.
Rich is also willing to laugh at himself, laugh at Corey [Dinardo, his assistant teacher], laugh with us and cry with us. He puts people at ease when they are stressed or in their heads or self-judging, but is still serious about his craft as well as ours. I'm lucky to have the opportunity to learn from him.