Ric began his educational career as an elementary school teacher and, later, a teacher of science and English literature in middle and high school. After two decades in K-12 classrooms, Ric completed a doctorate in education at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education while working as the associate director of The Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College, where he designed and founded the Master of Arts in Teaching Program.
As the Dean of Education of this innovative program, Ric advanced a different idea of teaching as a profession defined by a deep understanding of knowledge-making practices as the basis for learning and practical knowledge of how learning happens. He went on to design and lead a middle school in the South Bronx, organised as a learning community in which teachers were the leaders of instructional innovation and students the leaders of their own learning in a model of apprenticeship, which defined a responsive and productive relationship between teachers, students, and their families. Since 2018, Ric has devoted his time and effort to projects that advance teachers as the leaders of school improvement through the deliberate practice of inquiry as a continuous professional development.
“For the teacher leader, the student performance of knowledge is not simply the production of right answers. It involves a sense of personal appropriation, of personal reconstruction, as something that bears the stamp of the student’s lived experience, as something needed by the community, as something worthy of celebration.”
– Sergiovanni and Starratt, 2002