Author: Pernille Ripp

I am a passionate teacher in Oregon, Wisconsin, USA, who has taught 4th, 5th, and 7th grade. Proud techy geek, and mass consumer of incredible books. Creator of the Global Read Aloud Project, Co-founder of EdCamp MadWI, and believer in all children. I have no awards or accolades except for the lightbulbs that go off in my students’ heads every day. First book “Passionate Learners – Giving Our Classrooms Back to Our Students” can be purchased now. Second book“Empowered Schools, Empowered Students – Creating Connected and Invested Learners” is out now from Corwin Press. Follow me on Twitter @PernilleRipp.

being a teacher, Student, testing

It’s the Least We Can Do

December 21, 2011 Pernille Ripp

Image via Wikipedia

In this numbers obsessed society, test makers have figured us all out. They have realized that if they make the test long enough, tedious enough, and fill them with multiple choice or scantron-able answers then we will assume they are valuable. What more is that they have figured out that they can even sell us software that will grade the tests for us, break down all of the date, and create a nice graph. Testing done. Results at hand.

Except if we are to test students, then at the very least we should look at those tests. We should try to decipher their answers, create our own data, and meet with them to discuss it. Yes, a multiple choice test is cleaner and easier but it also provides less of a view into the heads of our students, into their thoughts, into their learning. A clean test that a machine can correct provides us with data, nothing else, points to be graphed with no clear direction or at the very least not a very detailed one.

So if we must test the children, then do them the favor of correcting it yourself. Give their work the time and effort you expect them to put into taking the test. It’s the least we can do.

being a teacher, social media, Student

How We Fail Young Students with Facebook

December 18, 2011 Pernille Ripp

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

A gaggle of 5th grade girls all sit around a lunch table obviously in a deep discussion. As I walk past them, one word makes my ears perk up and my step slow…Facebook. Immediately the teacher in me wants to interrupt, remind them that they are 10 and 11 which according to the law means they are not allowed to be on Facebook, and yet I don’t. I let them and their conversation be and instead head to my room and ponder the hypocrisy that is the age restriction on Facebook.

To be a legal member of Facebook you have to be 13 years old. The site makes this very clear, and yet we all know that the this rule is being broken on a daily basis as 4th and 5th graders sign up and start using the site. And while we can sit here and discuss how kids are just too young to handle to the responsibility of such a decision at that age, I think we should instead move on and discuss the real ramification of these sign ups: Kids that are not being taught how to use the site safely, because we choose to pretend they are not signing up. And yet, they are signing up, and they are using it to their full potential; the good, the bad, and the bullying. So rather than releasing educated students onto a social media site, we stick our heads in the sand, cover our ears and pretend it isn’t happening.

So as teachers we are once again put in a situation where we cannot teach kids skills that would be beneficial to them in the long run. Skills they for sure will need in middle school. Rather than confronting Facebook head on in the classroom and discussing how to use it, we ignore it, give stern warnings, and move on as if this will stop kids from signing up.

In America we seem to have a tendency in general to cover our ears and pretend kids are not doing things they shouldn’t, rather than actually teach them how to do it safely. Just look at how sex ed. and underage drinking is being treated. So as a society we would rather hold up the rule and say, “Well, they shouldn’t be doing this!” rather than face the facts and give them the proper education to handle it well. Again, this discussion isn’t meant to be about whether kids are too young to be on Facebook, much smarter people have written oodles about that. It is to bring up how we as a society should be giving kids an education in social media before they start to sign up rather than trying to patch things up later in life.

We fail these children when we pretend that they are not on Facebook at ten years old. We fail to teach them right, to show them how to behave and move around in a virtual social media site. How to deal with being friends with people or un-friending, how to post properly, what not to post, and how to treat others with respect. By being a restriction that is still so easily accessible to children, it becomes the ultimate must do. And perhaps Facebook isn’t what is so scary about this whole thing, but rather kids that have no idea how to use it properly. And that is for us to fix, if society would let us.

attention, choices, Student-centered

How Do You Get Kids to Pay Attention?

December 15, 2011 Pernille Ripp

I see a lot of articles discussing how to get the attention of students and am continually amazed at what these advice pieces seem to miss. Often the advice includes asking questions, which I agree with if they are the right kind of questions; please don’t ask them what page you are on, that does not count as a great question. It also includes giving students an incentive “The first 5 kids to buckle down will get to pick what we do next!” Or even to have a vote on something totally irrelevant to snap them out of their boredom; “Raise your hand if you like Christmas!’

It is not that I am better knowing, but I shake my hand at all that is missed through these suggestions. How about instead of bribing or tricking students into pay attention, we offer them learning opportunities that they actually want to pay attention to!

I know most of us are under guidelines for what we need to teach, but, a lot of us also have a choice in how we teach that. How about we transfer the choice to the students? How about rather than telling them what to do, we explore it with them, thus creating natural buy-in. Now I am part of a scripted math program as well and there the rigidity is more noticeable. Instead of bribing the kids, we work hard and then we get to do more in-depth explorations. I change it up often, even if it just means having the students move around and we do a lot of $2 whiteboard activities that involves all of the students rather than me standing up in front talking.

The point is; if we want students to pay attention, make it worth their time. We cannot keep expecting them to pay attention just because we want them to. Just because we were forced to pay attention in class doesn’t mean we should do the same thing to our students. It is our chance to not do school to them as it was done to us. Take it.

being a teacher, student driven, Student-centered

Keep the Focus as the Break Nears

December 15, 2011 Pernille Ripp

We are all a little antsy and just a little busy as the holidays draw nearer. To keep the focus in school and still have some fun here are some things we have been doing in my room.

Start a lunch time book club. All three 5th grade teachers did this so that the students had some choice in book. We meet once a week to eat and discuss the latest chapters. I love the extra connections being created between classes.
Get up and move. We have increased our dance breaks as the break gets closer. Except now we tend to listen to holiday music from around the world, nothing like “Julebal i Nisseland” to get their bodies moving.
Participate in something global. we are doing the holiday card exchange this year and the students are so excited to see the mail we are getting. They are also learning about other parts of the country and world through the letters. The cost: 30 stamps!
Take the time to appreciate. We don’t have a lot of time but I try to tell the kids either face-to-face or via post it note how much I appreciate specific things about them. It starts a wave of appreciation which boosts morale.
Keep busy. The less we have to do, the more we can focus on the upcming break. So we keep working to reach our deadlines and the reward is no homework over break.
Mix it up. Our schedule has been a little more flexible to fit our moods more these weeks. So if the kids are super antsy we get out of our seats and learn in a different way. This is not the time to force them them to sit still and listen (is it ever?).
Have some fun. I love to show educational videos when we have minutes left at the end of the day or during transitions. This week we started watching crack us up videos as well to get us in the spirit. George Couros shared this video to my students’ delight.
Relax – it might not all get done. Teachers seem to get more controlling and more frantic the closer break gets. The exact opposite should happen. get excited with the kids, set the tempo and then have some fun. Learning is meant to be fun, so do your part.
Let them choose. Buy in is much larger when the students get choice. I scrapped my original social studies project this week so that the kids could work on something of their choice. They get to work right away and stay focused through the whole period.

What do you do to keep students working and have some fun?

being me, homework

A Father Helps His Son With Math

December 12, 2011 Pernille Ripp

Last night as I sat in the San Francisco airport waiting for our flight home, I could’t help but listen in on an exchange happening across from me. A father sat with his child helping him with his math homework. My curiosity was first peeked because the lesson they were doing was one I had just taught that week which meant the boy was a fifth grader. And yet I stared fascinated as the dialogue continued:

Father – how did you get this solution?

Boy – I am not sure…

Father – Well, if you don’t know it is not right! Erase it properly and do it again.

Boy starts to erase the page…

Father – Now how are you doing this problem?

Boy starts to explain how he has been taught but is interrupted.

Father – That is not the correct way, why can’t you understand that! That is not how you do it.

Boys’ shoulders visibly slump.

Father – You need to get this done right now and do it right or we will erase it again.

As I sat there, horrified at this exchange, I almost jumped in and offered my help. But I didn’t because it wasn’t my place. Yet in my head I could not help but go there. How do parents expect us to teach a child to love math when this is how they help with homework? Obviously this father was frustrated, it was a Sunday evening and they were traveling, so that time was not the best to do anything that required brain power for the boy or for the father. Why do it in public like that? Why humiliate your own child with a raised voice? The effect on the child were immediate and very apparent. That child did not want to do his math anymore, he did not want to learn the method the father wanted to teach him. That child lost a little more faith in his education and I wonder how he felt? I felt horrible for him and I felt bad for that child’s teacher who had no idea that this boy had struggled with the math and that his father had helped him in such a way.

We do not always see the damage that homework creates outside of our room, or how well-meaning “helpers’ distribute their knowledge. All we see is how it affects the child in the long-run, how their love of learning diminishes and we wonder what we could have done differently? Well sometimes not assigning the homework is a huge step in the right direction.

authentic learning, being a teacher, lessons learned, PD

Thoughts on Professional Development

December 11, 2011 Pernille Ripp

Why do we even call it professional development? Being in education is so much more than just being a professional and development happens continually around us. Perhaps we should call it something different like expanding as an educator or how about just growth? Either professional development smacks of something that can only happent at a set time and is just not true, which leads me to my next point.
Why the limitations on what counts as pd? I often learn more spending an hour with my reader or even engaging in a twitter chat. Depending on who you immerse yourself with provocating thoughts abound, as does reflection. Go into a teacher’s lounge and engage in a conversation, I think they have gotten a bad rep unnecessarily.
Who says you have to be an expert to conduct pd? I think there are many people in educations that are experts at something, oftentimes, they just do not know it because nobody gave them the title. Go to an edcamp and see how many experts are there, heck, go to a school and be amazed at all the knowledge. We don’t need a fancy title to have something valuable to share.
Get rid of the limiting agendas. There seems to be a perpetual fear that if administration or whomever is putting on this pd doesn’t set an hour-by-hour or question-by-question agenda that all of the time will be worthless. That the conversation happening will only be moaning and procrastination. Maybe sometimes but not all the time, let those involved set the agenda and then trust them; there is far too little trust in education overall.
Enough with the crazy buzzwords! I don’t feel like listening to someone discuss what a 21st century learner looks like…hmm 5 foot 2, brown hair with a smile? Or even how the flipped classroom is going to save education. Common core standards, differentiation, value-added learning, PBIS and any of the other billions of acronyms hunting us all. Just give me titles I can understand and a discussion worth participating in.
Give me a chance to participate. Much like our students crave the recognition that their voices matter, so do PD participants. How else explain the back channels happening at even the tiniest of conferences? I have been tempted to pass notes even, anything really, to ask my questions, get some feedback and get the discussion started.
Enough with the stories. Educators love great stories and we all have them. Our aha moments, that kid that we stayed teaching for, those parents that challenged out assumptions, yep we all have them so let’s acknowledge that and move on. I love a great story over dinner but not the ones without a point and sometimes at PD sessions they just drain time.
Fair enough if you have something to sell but perhaps keep it to the end. I had the chance to sit through an inspirational speech where the much paid presenter kept starting stories only to never finish them because we could read how it turned out in his book. Seriously. If you are sharing a story make it relevant and tell the whole thing.
Do you really need a Powerpoint? I know it is so cool to bash Powerpoints but I think there is a huge reason for that. If your message is short, sweet and to the point give me some pictures to go with it, have dancers perform it behind you, or skip it altogether. Images behind you are a direct competition to your words so pick wisely.
Keep it short. And not just for my attention span, but also because even the most incredible learning opportunities will lose their luster after the message is repeated over 40 minutes. Shorten your message and open up for conversations, participation or even brainstorming.