Ricky Harzula is an Educational Consultant for Teaching Matters with an expertise in secondary social studies. Prior to joining Teaching Matters, Ricky worked for 9 years in Detroit in both public and charter school settings. Ricky taught AP US History, Leadership, US History, World History, Civics/Econ, Law, and Mythology. While teaching Ricky helped develop and taught a course designed to cultivate soft skills, identity, and mindsets in high school students. In addition to teaching Ricky also served as an instructional coach, grade level lead teacher, and sports coach.
Ricky believes that education should be joyous and empower students and teachers to explore their passions while finding success. Ricky strives to support schools and educators to make educating young people sustainable. He looks forward to working with schools who are focused on integrating growth mindset work, social emotional learning, culturally responsive-sustaining education into academic instruction to better develop the whole child. Ricky can support schools in providing appropriately rigorous instruction by designing curriculum that is standards-aligned, creating assessments and using the data to drive instruction, providing concrete feedback based on classroom observations, facilitating planning meetings to develop long and short term plans, and implementing various types of internal professional development opportunities. In his spare time Ricky is an avid runner and board game player.