Be the change – Page 15

Be the change, being a teacher, classroom setup, our classroom

On Flexible Seating

December 28, 2017December 29, 2017 Pernille Schmidt Ripp

Our classroom, room 235D, is an open door classroom. Anyone is allowed in to see us learn together at any time. Our classroom is nothing fancy. We have tables covered in whiteboard paper, that has seen better days. We have chairs. We have yoga balls. We have ratty old beanbags that are definitely on their last leg. A few pillows of varying sizes. And we have books, many, many books.

That’s what you might see, but if you stayed awhile, you may notice something else; freedom. Shared control. Freedom to sit where we would like. Freedom to choose who we work with. Freedom to move the furniture around. A sense of shared control over our shared space so that we all can feel comfortable together. It is nothing much but is ours and you would think that the students would realize just how unfancy it is. And yet, every year when I ask my students how I could change our classroom, the answers are similar, “It’s fine, Mrs. Ripp. Perhaps a few more pillows. We like it the way it is…”

While I have a milelong wish list of furniture I wish we could get, I find comfort in their answer. The room is working for us, as well as it can. The control that they have over what the room looks like is working for them. The flexible seating that has been a part of our learning for years, works for us.

And I see it spread across the globe; the push for more innovative seating. For yoga balls and wiggle chairs, pillows, and getting rid of desks. On Pinterest I drool over classrooms I will never be able to recreate, and yet, I wonder; how often does the furniture actually match the teaching? How often does the furniture match the educational philosophy that needs to be in place for this to truly be flexible?

Because the reality is that while many districts are gladly spending money on new furniture in order to promote innovation, the educational philosophy in many of those same districts is not changing. The students are still sitting through a scripted curriculum, where teachers have limited choice in how to teach and the students are expected to learn through the same process.

This is the problem in education; we so gladly throw money at new educational initiatives that look great, but then do little to think about our thinking. And yet, our educational philosophy is what really determines the experience that everyone has within our schools, not the fancy new chairs. Buying new furniture is easy, changing the way we educate is not, and then we wonder why the furniture ends up being used in the exact same way as the furniture was before.

So I wonder; what good is flexible seating if we don’t also have flexible thinking?

One of the central questions of our year together is for my students to explore how they learn best. This includes the room manipulation and where in the classroom they need to be to access the learning. They cannot do this if I am constantly telling them where to sit, how to sit, and also with whom to sit by. There has to be room for experimentation, bad decisions, and reflection on what works best for them.

So before we invest more of our already limited funds into newfangled furniture, let’s look at what flexible seating should really encompass, here are a few questions to help.

Can the kids move the furniture?

Flexible seating should be flexible both in function but also in where it is used. If students need to explore how they learn best then deciding where to sit is just as important, if not more so, than what to sit on. Do they need to move tables into a corner so they can think or will being in the middle of the classroom work better for them? Will they learn best sitting on the floor in the front or pacing in the back? Where in the classroom can they access the learning best?

Do they always need permission?

When permission is tied into flexible seating, we often tend to say “no” to the same kids; the kids who may have made poor decisions in the past. And while there certainly can be different guidelines at times for some kids, they need to, at some point, go back to having the same blanket permission as everyone else. Schools are meant to be safe places for kids to experiment with learning, to try new things, to learn about who they are and what they need. If we constantly limit that for some kids, think of what will happen to their self-advocacy and also their sense of belonging.

Is it choice for all or just for some?

Are kids earning their way into the flexible seating or is it an automatic yes to all? While there are times I have doubt about some of the choices my students are making, I will tell them to prove it to me. If they do, then great, if they don’t, then we discuss further. We have to be careful that flexible seating choices do not become one more way to segregate the kids. After all, it is often some of my most challenging learners that benefit the most from having a different way to work in the classroom, but we won’t know that if they don’t get a chance to choose.

Does it encourage new ways of working?

I have seen beautiful classrooms with lots of flexible seating where students work through traditional lessons; teacher-centered, and one process for all. Where is the innovation in that? One of the things I love the most is how my students move around the classroom and try new configurations when needed. Not at all times by any means, but when they need to. They know they have the tools at hand to move their group onto the floor or a table in the team area. They know they can make the furniture support their learning rather than work around its limitation. They know to use each other as writing peers, reading partners, or project collaborators because they know that with their choices in seating also comes the choice in who to work with most of the time. They think about how to work, rather than always look to me to make all of the decisions, thus growing their independence and once again their knowledge of how they learn best.

Is there choice throughout?

Flexible seating should truly just be the outward indicator of the choice-driven learning that should be happening. We operate under the five tenets of choice at all times, meaning that I try to give my students as much control and power over how they learn, what they learn, who they learn it with, and how they are assessed. This is what matters most to me. Not the yoga balls, not the pillows, not how they can move things around, but that the students feel like they have a shared power and responsibility for what happens in our classroom. It is a work in progress every single year, yet, at the end of the year, I am always amazed at how far we have come.

So as a new year begins, it is time for us to really reflect on the educational innovation we are pursuing. If we are looking at adding more flexible seating to our schools, are we also having the educational discussions that need to go with it? Are we asking ourselves how this will change the way we teach? The way our students learn? Are we asking ourselves how this will be better? Or is it just an outward show of supposed innovation that does not really change the educational experience our students have?

The choice is ours; it is not enough to have great new furniture if we don’t also have new ideas.

PS: If you are wondering what the research says, here are a few great articles to get you started. One that discusses the need for our classrooms to match the type of learning experiences we would like to have, so once more focusing on intentionality within our environment. And another that is a conglomeration of research that discusses the need for students to feel empowered within our classrooms. And here is another that while lengthy discusses how the way we have students sit can help them learn deeper depending on the activity they are engaged in.

If you like what you read here, consider reading my newest book, Passionate Readers – The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child, out August 2017. This book focuses on the five keys we can implement into any reading community to strengthen student reading experiences, even within the 45 minute English block. If you are looking for solutions and ideas for how to re-engage all of your students consider reading my very first book Passionate Learners – How to Engage and Empower Your Students. Also, if you are wondering where I will be in the coming year or would like to have me speak, please see this page.

Be the change, being a teacher, Student dreams

He Was an Angry Child, You Know

December 26, 2017 Pernille Schmidt Ripp

He was an angry child, you know.

The clenched fists. The stare that could take you down. The raised voice with the yells of unfairness.

“It wasn’t me…” traveled down the hall, always emanating from our classroom.

He was the angry child.

The kicked-back chairs and the tossed desk told his story loudly.

The playground fights, the raised fists told it as well.

So did the suspensions.

The missed assignments.

The checklist and the endless meetings.

He was an angry child, or so they said.

At least, that is all you would see if that was all you noticed.

If you didn’t look further or take the time, you would have missed everything else that he was.

Because did you know, he was a dancer? That he could play ball with the best of them?

That he could hold a tiny baby and surround it with love, thanking you for the chance to say hello.

That he was funny, his smile would light up the room, his jokes would crack us all up, even when I tried to teach.

That he liked to read when he found the right book.

That while his life was far from easy, he still had love? He wanted to give love.

It would have been so easy to only see the angry. After all, how often do we only see a child for their loudest quality? How often do we so easily dismiss everything else they are as we try to fix their problem, as we try to fix them? How often does their story reach us before they do and already we have prepared everything we think we need without knowing if they need it. We get stuck in our thought patterns and only see the flaws, the areas of growth, and not everything else that makes them the person they are.

How easily we compartmentalize children to only be one story, while we speak of growth mindset and embracing differences. To only have one facet and let that become the only thing we see in every interaction, in every discussion? Do we ever stop to consider how the narrative we dictate becomes the story that unfolds? Do we ever wonder if the children we teach can see the labels we have for them? (I think they do). And while some may fight with everything they have to not be who we think they are, others may simply shrug their shoulders and accept the destiny we have had a part in designing and become the kid that they think we see.

It would have been so easy to only see the angry. To only discuss the fights. To only share the bad, the areas needed for growth. But we didn’t. We couldn’t. Because he deserved more than what he had gotten before.

Because sure, he was an angry child, but he grew up to be a college student. A football player on a scholarship, telling you he is going to be a PE teacher some day. One who checks in once in a while, showing of his GPA (3.36 baby!) that may have just made you cry. Who may not be at the end of his journey just yet but has come so far already.

He was an angry child, you know, but he was also a child who needed more love than he had gotten before. More understanding than I had ever given before. More patience than I thought possible. And he grew up and he becomes something more. Not because of us, but despite us at times.

So what do you see when you see that child? Who do you think they will become?

Be the change, being a teacher

Excuse Me While I “Just” Go Innovate

December 2, 2017December 2, 2017 Pernille Schmidt Ripp

It has been building for a while. This idea that teachers need to “just” innovate more. That we need to break the system, try a new idea every day. That we need to just do more. Just do it better. Just be more.

But that little word “just” has such a huge implication.

It tells me that what I am doing is not already innovative.

That what I am doing is not enough.

That I am not good enough, nor enough for the very kids I teach.

That if I only would “just” be a better teacher then perhaps all kids would run into my classroom with a smile on their face and beg me not to send them home.

But I teach real live children who have friendships, and emotions, and families, and lives to live and so no, I don’t get offended when they don’t run into my classroom, I look for the small acknowledgments that what we do matters, rather than the big empty promises of a smile that may or not be plastered on for my benefit.

And the thing is, I do innovate. Educators and administrators do every single day. When we see a child not getting what they are meant to learn, I am innovating on the spot trying to problem solve a situation with a child I may or may not know very well and come up with a solution so that this child can feel like what we are doing at this very moment matters to them.

And I am innovating when I lesson plan and I pull my own resources, my own expertise, my tried-and-true, and find those from others and I take into account the story of every single child I teach, 100 and counting, and I try to create lessons that they will have power over, that they will be invested in, that they will remember. And then I repeat it for the next day.

And I am innovating when a child tells me their truth, that school is not for them and I ask them what I can do to be a better teacher, to make this a place they want to come to.

And I am innovating when I sit with colleagues and we problem-solve and we ask each other how we can reach every child and make sure every child has a chance of success.

And I am innovating when I speak to those at home and ask how I can be more for their child.

But that doesn’t count as innovative in many “experts” eyes. I am not flipping my classroom, or doing blended learning, or even bringing in new technology that is sure to blow my student’s minds.

My classroom has tables, and ratty bean bags, and yoga balls that deflate from too many wild bounces. My classroom has books, not digital ones, but the ones with paper that allow children to pass them on to each other when they know they need to share their experience with someone else who will get it.

My classroom has Chromebooks and we use them to bring the stories of others in. We use them to bring our stories out. We use them to make sense of the world that sometimes seems so senseless.

Every day we try to make count. Every day, we hope these kids entrusted to us will have a great experience, will learn something, will be something more than when they came. We innovate every day, but you don’t see it if you don’t look for it.

And yet we are told as teachers over and over to do more. To be more. Because the more that we are doing is not enough. If we “just” embraced innovation and took a risk. Finally tried something new. Then, maybe then, all kids would finally love school.

It is a race none of us can win, and yet we keep on running, hoping that someday we will have it figured out. And so we innovate quietly before we go to sleep, when we wake up in the middle of the night, when we drive to work when we take our lunch break.

So I ask those who tell us these things who are no longer in the classroom. And I don’t mean just out of touch administrators because I would say that the administrators that I know innovate every single day on their feet long after I get to go home, but anyone who has forgotten what it means to be a teacher. What it means to juggle hundreds of things every single day, well knowing that the very future of this country lies within our hands.

Come teach.

Come be in our classroom and innovate alongside us. Not for a day, anyone can make it a day in 7th Grade English. Come for a week, a month. Come tell me how to be more and then tell me what I no longer need to do, because it has been a while since that has happened.

Come be with us. Show us what innovation can look like but stop using the word “just.” Just implies easy, as if I don’t want to be more. Just implies that it is something I am choosing not to do.

Teaching is an art, we can hope to do it well by the time we retire. It is a permanent pursuit of innovation that many would not be able to do. Perhaps that is why so many choose to leave. Some to teach others their best ideas, others to tell us what to do without remembering what it means to actually do it. I, for one, am staying, are you?

Be the change, being a teacher, students teach me

As I Plan My Lesson

November 25, 2017 Pernille Schmidt Ripp

It has been four days since I stood in my classroom and surveyed the books. Four days since I got the papers ready. Four days since I sharpened the pencils and then shut the door, ready to take a break. My brain is now thinking of how in one day I go back. rejuvenated, refreshed, excited, and yet…

Am I really ready to be the teacher that these kids so wholeheartedly need?

I keep seeing the ideas shared. The quippy lines. The hopes and dreams that we so eagerly pass on as reminders to one another. The mantras, the quotes and even the blog posts that tell us how we should be teaching. With urgency, with passion, with creativity.

We should see each child.

We should strive for more.

We should make it relevant.

We should make it challenging.

We should make it real-world learning, whatever that means.

And yet…

We say we want the students to talk, but are we quiet long enough to hear them?

We say we want innovative classrooms, but are we embracing new ideas, unafraid of change?

We say we want hands-on learning, but are we providing opportunities for that or are we stumped for how to do it?

We say we want kids to explore, but are we giving them the time to veer off our path?

We say we want choice, but are we giving it?

We share the ideas that others have and tell ourselves that they are right. That we can do education better, but then fall into our same patterns as we shut our doors and get to teaching. We nod our heads in agreement with all the pretty statements but then cannot find the time, the courage, or the know how to change.

So as I prepare for this Monday, I ask myself, is this everything you hoped it would be or could it be better? And if so, how?

Perhaps I need to ask myself the following, and perhaps you should too:

How is there choice involved?
How are their voices heard?
How can they move around?
How can it be relevant to them?
How can it matter?
How can it be fun?
How will this help them grow?

And then I can plan my lesson.

Be the change, being a teacher, being me

On My Own White Immigrant Privilige

November 20, 2017November 20, 2017 Pernille Schmidt Ripp

I often get asked how I started writing, where this blog came from. My answer has always been the same; this blog should b called Pernille’s Random Thoughts. Pernille’s thoughts that keep me up at night. Pernille’s reflections that I need to to make so that I can grow from them. While I know others now read it, this was never my intention, it still isn’t.

I write for myself.

For the words that otherwise haunt me.

For the experiences, I have to process.

Sometimes I write to share ideas because I am so proud of something that worked.

Sometimes I write to share failures so that others can learn alongside me.

Sometimes I write simply to think out loud, to hold myself accountable, to set my thoughts out in the world so that I can be reminded of what I believe in to my core.

On Sunday, 8 AM, at NCTE, I was part of a session with 6 powerful women. That morning Jess Lifshitz, Katie Muhtaris, Kathleen Sokolowski, Sara Ahmed, Katherine Hale, Donalyn Miller and I got the chance to share a personal story to help others reflect on their identity and our society. The invitation was wide open for me to share whatever I felt like. I knew that this was an opportunity for me to take the privilege that I have been handed because of my skin color, my socioeconomic status, my resources and so many other things and shine a light on it.

And yet, I was scared. My hands shook. Not because my risks are great; what’s the worst that can happen?! (Although I sometimes do forget that things can happen that would greatly affect my family) But because I was afraid of not saying it right. Of muddling my words. Of unintended consequences. But the words came out and so did the tears. So for all of you who were not in our little session at NCTE, here is the story I chose to share, some pieces already shared on this blog, and others not.

I remember clenching the steering wheel. The red and blue lights behind me flashing. My heart in my throat. My breathing fast. In my head, I kept wondering what I had done. I knew I had followed the speed limit. I knew I had used my blinkers. I knew my registration was up to date.

And yet, I was getting pulled over and all of my kids were in the kid yelling at me about the police car behind us. As the police officer walked up, I was scared. After all, I didn’t have my Green Card on me. That little card that grants me the permission to be in the United States as a lawful immigrant. That little card that tells authority that I am legal. That little card that I am supposed to carry on me at all times, in case anyone ever needs to see it. In case the police, or ICE agents, or any other authority ever decides to question whether I have the right to be in the United States of America.

I didn’t have it. It was at home. And then the police officer came up to my window.

I rolled down the window, ready to ask if I could please go home and get it, ready to make promises to always carry it with me in the future. I still had no idea why I was being pulled over.

She asked me for my license and I held my breath as I handed it over and she began to speak.

My brake light was out. That was it. A brake light. I had seven days to get it fixed or else but my “or else” was a ticket, not questioning, not deportation.

She thanked me for my time. And then she walked away.

She never asked about my green card. She never asked if I was an American. She never even thought to ask.

I almost cried as I pulled my car out into traffic and went home.

I was raised in Bjerringbro, Denmark, a small town of about 8,000 people. My mother moved my siblings and me there, I was 6 months old when she found the courage to look for a better life. My mother was a strong single mother, who also had a wandering heart and so when I was six years old, she moved us to America so that she could write a book at Berkeley. I was six years old the first time I spoke a word of English taught to me in an inner city classroom in San Francisco. For seven months I navigated this foreign tongue, I navigated not understanding what someone said to me when they spoke. I navigated trying to find the bathroom when you don’t know how to ask to leave or even how to say “Bathroom.” I navigated how to make friends when you don’t speak the same language, how to show I was smart even if I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. And just when I felt like I had mastered this new language, this new culture, this new me, we went home. Back to Denmark where we resumed the life we had left behind. Becoming Danish once again, rather than a kid who doesn’t have English as their first language.

So when you see me; do you see a woman whose first language is not English? Do you see the ESL student I was? Or do you just see my white skin? Hear my American English?

When I was 18, my mother decided it was time to move again and she asked me once more if I would come. “Stay for a year and if you don’t like it, I will buy your ticket home.” In July of 1998, I walked up to the counter in Logan Airport and declared myself an immigrant. I was alone, traveling by myself, and clutching my sealed papers as tightly as I could. The immigration official, a surly man, pulled me into a small room, took my papers and then opened them without a word. I stood there silent, afraid that I somehow would make the wrong move or say the wrong thing. Afraid that at any moment the uniformed man, this stranger, would decide that I was not going to America and just like that I would be sent back home to a country where my family no longer was. After questioning, he stamped my passport, handed it back and simply said; “Welcome to America” as he led me out into what felt like a whole new world.

Newly moved to Wisconsin, in my 18 year old glory

For 19 years no one has ever asked me for my papers again. I have walked freely wherever I wanted to without being questioned, without being pulled over, without name-calling, all because of how I look. That is white privilege,

When I wrote about how I am never assumed to be an immigrant, someone replied; “Well, that is easy to understand, after all, you look like an American.”

Let’s think about that for a moment. How can I look like an American when I do not have a single drop of American blood in me? How can I look like an American when I can trace my Danish roots back more than a thousand years? How can I look like an American when my first language is Danish and not English?

Take Martha, our nanny. She is a full-blooded American and yet she gets pulled over regularly for as she calls it “Driving while Mexican.” She is questioned about her heritage, asked where she is really from, whether her parents came here illegally. When we go out together, she is automatically viewed as the immigrant and I am not. Our assumptions about what makes someone American follows her everywhere she goes. She shrugs it off like it is no big deal, says that’s just the way it is, but I am not okay with that, we shouldn’t be okay with that.

And I get it, I am so white I am like a caricature of whiteness. You see me coming; blonde, blue eyes, tall, my Viking heritage directly responsible for the four blonde children that cruise around with me in our mini-van while we bungle the words to Despacito. I was born white, it is who I am, but I am on a journey to use my innate privilege to be something more. Not just an ally, but a fighter. Someone who doesn’t just shut the door when the going gets tough but leaves it wide open.

My children go to a school that does not mirror us. It is through circumstance we came to it but by choice that we stayed. Learning among other cultures, races and identities have brought many questions to our dining room table. Questions that were hard for us to navigate with our young children, questions who pushed our own thinking. I shudder to think whether these questions would have been posed by my children if they did not go to the school they do. And so I think of the choices we, as white people, make as a privileged society to keep our lives homogenous. How we live in neighborhoods where people look like us, we send our kids to schools where they float in a sea of whiteness, we not only elect people whose values mirror our own but so do their faces. I can choose to step away from racism. I can choose to step away from inequity discussions. I can choose to step away from anything that may be upsetting, dangerous, or demoralizing.

I am privileged because I get to be afraid of the type of reaction my teaching may cause if I continue to discuss inequity. If I continue to discuss racism. If I continue to discuss what it means to be privileged in my classroom. I get to be afraid for my job and I get to choose whether to have these hard conversations or not. But the truth is, there should be no choice. We, as teachers, are on the front lines of changing the future narrative of this country. Ugliness and all. We are the bastions of truth, so what truth are we bringing into our classrooms?

Where is our courage when it comes to being a part of dismantling a racist and prejudiced system? It is not enough to have diverse books in our classrooms if we are too afraid to discuss diversity and what the lack of humanity for others does to our democracy. It is not enough to say “You matter” and then do nothing to change the world that we live in. Or to celebrate diversity and then not accept a child for who they truly are, differences and all. It is not enough to say we are an ally if our actions don’t match our words. I don’t need 100 clones of me, I need to create more opportunities for the students to do the hard work. To offer them an opportunity to decide. To create an environment where they can discover their own opinion. Where they can explore the world, even when it is ugly so that they can decide which side of history they want to fall on.

So this year I am planning for even harder conversations. I am planning on being an ally, for being a fighter, even when I get scared. We say we teach all children, but do we teach all stories? Do we teach the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or just the sanitized version that will not ruffle any feathers? Do we give the students time to discuss, to formulate their own opinions, to evaluate the society that they live in and reach their own conclusions?

I am so white, I am like a caricature of whiteness, but perhaps even this white person can make a difference by not being so afraid. By listening, by asking questions, and by doing more than just saying that this world is filled with wrongness.

I am no longer just an immigrant, this summer I became a United States Citizen. I no longer have to fear being deported and separated from my children, but then again; did I ever really have to fear that? Or did my white skin shield me from what it truly means to be an immigrant to this country? Did it give me the cover of assumptions when I am assumed to be American? And so I wonder; what assumptions do you make about those that you teach?

My beautiful friend, Jess Lifshitz’ also shared her story, please go read it, it took my breath away.

Be the change, being a teacher, Literacy, Reading, Reading Identity

On Book Censorship and Fighting Hard

November 18, 2017November 20, 2017 Pernille Schmidt Ripp

I cannot say that I teach all children if I do not have all children s stories represented on my shelves We say we want equity.

We say we want equality.

We say we want to teach social justice.

That we want our kids to be awake, to be critical, to be citizens who not just consume information, but tear it apart, ask the hard questions and then draw their own conclusions. Who stand up, who fight for what they know is right, who knows what it means to be afraid of the decisions they make but still keep fighting.

We want them to feel safe with us.

To matter with us.

To be something even more than they were before with us.

We say we want to teach all children and help them discover their superpowers so that they too believe that they can be someone.

But our censored libraries tell different stories.

Our libraries tell us of the fear we feel.

The decisions we make.

The way we exclude without meaning to.

The way we keep the white, cis-gender, hetero norm the norm.

The way we perpetuate the privilege so many of us live.

When we say we want equity we cannot shout those words without looking at the equity that our libraries represent.

Do we have all our children’s stories represented?

Can all of our children find themselves in our books?

Can those who are not ready to label themselves find the answer they may not even know they needed within our pages?

Can those who feel marginalized, disenfranchised, rejected find a home within the pages of the books we place on our shelves?

Can those who mainstream society tend to label as “other” find a representation of the normal being they are? One that is not other, but one that just is?

I get that we are afraid to offend. I get that we are afraid for our jobs. I get that we worry about backlash, pushback, and questioning. But perhaps that is why we became teachers so that we can fight for those who society has tried so hard to silence? So that our voices can join those whose voices are just a whisper.

So that we can stand up for those who do not have the armor of white privilege, of hetero privilege, of middle-class privilege, of cisgender privilege and say that their stories are part of the human story and therefore deserves to be in the very books we hand to children. And once we are standing up, we can give them our space, so that they can reclaim the void that society wants to keep them in.

I cannot say that I teach all children if I do not have all children’s stories represented on my shelves. It’s as simple, and as complicated as that.

Don’t forget that not being able to find yourself in a story is not just a tragedy, it is a complete erasure of your identity. One that we easily can forget when our own identity is constantly represented.

So fight for yourself. Fight for your books. Fight on and fight hard. All of our children are counting on us.

PS: If you want to be smarter, follow my friend Dana Stachowiak.