Rich Czyz is Principal of the Yardville Elementary School in New Jersey and Co-Founder of FourOClockFaculty.com and the author of his book, The Four O’Clock Faculty: A Rogue Guide To Revolutionizing Professional Learning.

I started following Rich Czyz and Four O’Clock Faculty on Twitter several years ago and was amazed by how much he was sharing. Rich with Trevor Bryan post almost every day. They even wrote a section on culture in my book. When I finished reading Rich’s latest book, I just had to invite him to have a conversation. Below are excerpts from the podcast:

 

Can you share with my audience about you, your family, and your background?

I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with my wife and three children. We really enjoy the area and I work in New Jersey. I started as a fifth-grade teacher and worked my way up through instructional coach to technology coach to a supervisor and then as a director of the curriculum. I felt I needed to be back with students so I took a principal’s job at a wonderful place to be every day in the 2nd and 3rd-grade building. I’m lucky to hang out with kids every day and collaborate with teachers.

 

Why are you so passionate about changing the culture of professional learning?

I’ve sat through a lot of professional development and been responsible for planning professional development (PD). Sitting through a lot of it, I’ve felt that it is not where it needs to be. My personal belief is that professional learning and professional development is the one thing that educators can do in order to change education. They can take charge of their own professional learning. A lot of times PD is left in the hands of a couple of district administrators or building principal. Leaving it in their hands, sometimes teachers are not necessarily getting what they need. It is the one thing that can really change the outcomes that we are seeing in classrooms. We are missing professional learning and development that is connected to what we are doing in the classroom.

 

Is that why you and Trevor Bryan started the Four O’Clock Faculty and posted tips and ideas often?

Trevor and I were colleagues in my first job where he was the art teacher at a new school. When I taught 5th grade, he was my students’ art teacher. We found that we were very similar in our beliefs about education. Trevor and I had some ideas about professional learning and development to help colleagues grow and learn so we decided to start a blog and reflect on our own learning. It all started on a snow day in 2015 with unexpected time and decided that day was the day to start our blog, Four O’Clock Faculty. I wrote two posts that day that started it off. It gives both Trevor and I a platform for sharing our message which we think is an important one about really inspiring students with creativity, collaboration, and getting them to authentic, relevant learning. We’re excited about it and we post almost every day. We recognized that visuals and simple messages are what everyone seems to gravitate to. So we create visuals with tips and short messages for educators to learn something in a quick and easy way.

Read more about the origins of the Four O’Clock Faculty.

 

I read your new book, The Four O’Clock Faculty: A Rogue Guide To Revolutionizing Professional Learning. My focus for years has been professional development. Now I call it professional learning and this is the book all of us need to read. Tell me your journey in writing it.

It...