Be the change – Page 33

aha moment, Be the change, being a teacher, being me, challenge, choices, Passion

When We Forget Where We Are Going

April 8, 2015 Pernille Ripp

Sometimes we get so turned around that we forget our chosen path. We forget where we are going. We forget where we came from. And in our turned-around-ness we think we need to abandon our path completely, because we no longer know who we are.

A week ago I thought my path forward next year would not be in 7th grade. That I was not meant to teach this challenging age after all. That I had gotten so far away from who I was as a teacher that there was no way for me to find myself again. I didn’t want to stick around for another year, I wanted to run. Forget about the challenges, Forget about all the good I thought I could do that wasn’t happening. Lick my wounds and go back to my safe zone. Back to elementary where the kids show they like you and think your jokes are funny.

Then spring break happened and with it came a moment to reflect. A moment to remember that I don’t run from challenges. I don’t quit when it gets hard. That when something isn’t working, I don’t give up, I fix it. And that perhaps 7th grade is my biggest challenge, and since when have challenges scared me?

I had forgotten that the last time I thought I was going to quit, I recommitted.

I had forgotten that the last time I didn’t like the teacher I had become, I changed.

I had forgotten that it is hard to change schools, districts, and especially grade levels, but we still do it.

That it is hard to reinvent yourself. That it is hard to figure out new curriculum. That it is hard to get to know students especially when you only have them for 45 minutes. And that you will never be the greatest of teachers the very first year you teach something. No matter your passion. No matter your dedication. No matter your ideas.

So I am getting back to basics. Back to making it about the kids and not the curriculum. Making it about growing together and figuring it out. About making school about them and not about me. Taking my own advice over the years and giving the classroom back to the students. Away from homework, away from scores, away from me lecturing, and back to them doing, and questioning, and changing our school.

I am terrified to continue on as a 7th grade teacher. They are my biggest challenge. Yet, within that challenge I have been given a new chance to be better. And not just as a teacher, but as a human being. Sometimes life gets us so lost that we forget to see where we are. We forget to see the wonder around us. To marvel at all of the greatness that surrounds us. It is time for me to once again open my eyes and revel in the fact that I get to be a part of the 7th grade journey. It is time for me to stop being so scared and getting back to what I love; being a great teacher for every single kid. Even the ones that make me want to quit.

I am a passionate teacher in Oregon, Wisconsin, USA but originally from Denmark, 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. The second edition of my first book “Passionate Learners – Giving Our Classrooms Back to Our Students” will be published by Routledge in the fall. Second book“Empowered Schools, Empowered Students – Creating Connected and Invested Learners” is out now from Corwin Press. Join our Passionate Learners community on Facebook and follow me on Twitter @PernilleRipp.

Be the change, being a teacher, being me, student choice, student voice

My Students Don’t Want to Make All the Time And I Am Okay With That

April 4, 2015 Pernille Ripp

We seem to think that all students want to just be left alone to make and create. That if given the choice, the students would love school so much more if we just provided them with big picture goals and then let them meander along their own path to get there. That they need time to just think and do, without too much interference from the teacher. That if we give them enough tools and enough freedom then their inner passion will be awakened and they will discover their destiny. That school is breaking the creative spirit of all children by not providing freedom and that we must get back to making all of the time. Yet is this true? Is this really what all children need?

I bring this up because it seems that in our voyage to overhaul school we seem to be going to a new extreme; one that assumes that all students want to make. That all students are passionate artists held back by the confinement of school. I am not sure this is true though, at least it isn’t, according to my students.

My students are telling me that they want choice all the time, but that one of the choices should always be to follow a path set forth by the teacher.

My students are telling me that they would like to create sometimes but that other times they need ideas for what they can create.

My students are asking to not be left alone at all times. That they need guidance and vision, that they need help, because they don’t know always know where they are going or what they are trying to do. Sometimes they don’t need me right there, but sometimes they do.

My students are telling me that for most of them it is not enough to just know where they need to end, but they need to know how to get there as well. And that is my job, their job, and why we are in a classroom.

My students are telling me that a teacher’s job is to teach and that they would like to to learn and sometimes that means sitting and listening, not doing, not inventing, not creating. That constantly making is exhausting, and not in a great way. That there must be balance in all of our classrooms.

That doesn’t mean that they are broken. That doesn’t mean they will not be successful adults. That does not mean that school somehow has robbed them of their creativity or of their voice. It doesn’t mean that we have successfully indoctrinated all students to believe they are un-creative, it simply means that they are kids learning. That they are kids who want to experiment but not be on their own. That we need to ask our students and then listen to what they all say and then cater our teaching to reach all of them. Not assume they don’t need us anymore. Not assume that school will only be a place that holds them back unless we remove all constraints.

Once again, we must make school about the kids we teach not the kids we think we teach. Those kids need us, all of us, all of the time. And they may need us in ways we don’t realize, our job is to figure it out and then stop assuming they don’t mean what they say. When they say they want a teacher to teach them that is not inherently bad, it just means they are not quite ready, and that is perfectly ok.

Be the change, student voice

Treated As One – A Poem by A Student

February 27, 2015 Pernille Ripp

I tell my students to speak boldly, and they do. Thank you Corinne for letting me share your poem.

Treated As One

1.5, 2.9, 3.4, 4.0

Grade point averages

They define who we are.

People walk around school saying

“I got an A”-4.0

“I have a learning disability”-1.5

“I don’t understand”-2.9

“I’m not good enough”-3.4

People always say “Everyone is different”

Well if everyone is different why do we ALL

have to take the same test?

Why do we have one grading system

for six schools with hundreds of kids.

I know life isn’t always fair but school should be.

Because school is where you practice

It’s where you practice what you’ll later need.

Why is a group of different people

taught in one way?

A way where half of the kids don’t understand,

and then the teachers have to say to their parents

“They don’t put in enough effort”

When maybe they think in a different way

I speak for my dyslexic sister

who has to get tutored two times a week

She has told me many times

“I don’t understand”

It’s such a sad thing to see a brilliant mind get

shut away because of what the other kids will say

She once had a teacher that said

she used the word dyslexic as an excuse

to get out of reading

When she hadn’t even read the papers that diagnose her.

My sister is one out of thousands

who don’t get treated fair,

We all just have to live with being

treated as one

All though we are more.

assessment, assumptions, Be the change, being a teacher, education reform, No grades, student voice

What My Students Told Me – Students Take on Grades

February 26, 2015April 24, 2015 Pernille Ripp

I thought teaching 7th graders would mean that they had a cool distance to school. That they knew that the grades we give reflect the work they do. That a report card is not meant as a slap in the face, but rather a tool to be used as they grow toward their goal. I thought that moving from letter grades to standards based meant students would get it better, would embrace the chance to see what they needed to focus on and then work harder to master their deficits. Yet again what I thought has proven to not be so, so when I asked my students their thoughts on grades so that I could add their voice to the re-publication of Passionate Learners, I had to take a moment to digest what they told me. It wasn’t what they said about whether teachers should grade or not, it was how they reacted to the grades they were given.

Once again, I am the mouthpiece for my students, they asked that I please share this with the world in the hope that it will inspire change. In the hope that it will inspire discussion, that we will take their thoughts and use them to push our own. So what my students wish teachers knew about grades is simple, yet significant. I hope it makes you think.

That they feel they have little to no control over what grade they get. Even in a standards-based grading district, where I ask them to show me mastery with deconstructed standards using rubrics we have created together, they still feel that they have little control over how they are assessed, and more importantly what that assessment means to them. Now imagine how students feel when they haven’t created the rubric, self-assessed, or deconstructed the standards. They don’t understand the rubrics we give, they don’t understand at times what they should know to be labeled proficient. They don’t understand the number they are given. They crave feedback and conversation, rather than a number or letter. They crave classrooms that relish growth, failure, and attempts at learning.

That grades means they are done. The minute we grade something, they are done with it. It is the signal they need to move on, no matter that I teach in a district that allows and encourages re-takes for everything. If we want them to continue working on something then we should give feedback but no scores.

That grades sometimes become the one thing that their parents look at, nothing else. The minute a grade is placed on something that is all their parents can focus on. Their parents don’t always care about the effort, they don’t always care about the growth, just what the final result is. The conversations then centers around reaching the “3” or the “4,” to get that A, rather than what they learned, how they liked it, and what they are working on next.

That a grade tells them whether they are smart or not. We may say that grades are in their control and that they don’t reflect how smart they are, but they are not listening. If you get good grades, you must be smart, if you don’t well then you are dumb. Grades are leading them to a fixed mindset, rather than the growth mindset we are all hoping for.

That publishing honor rolls or GPA’s mean that their private learning is now public. We may see releasing these names as a way to celebrate their learning, but many of my students says it just creates a divide. And it’s not the students who are not on honor roll that said this to me, no, over and over it was the students that made it. They didn’t see their accomplishments as anyone else’s business.

That grades are for the future, not for the now. So many of my students reported that grades mattered because they want to go to college, and while at first I found this to be great (they care about the future!) I soon realized that this is so far from the purpose of what school should be. Students should keep an eye on the future, yes, but they should also keep an e eye on the now. They should be focused on the learning journey they are currently on and be excited to see their own growth and how it will help them right now, not 6 years from now.

Once again, my students are pushing me to change the way I asses in the classroom. While I strive to give them meaningful feedback, I have slipped from my ways. That’s what happens when you teach more than 100 students. Yet, the numbers I am so carefully doling out are not helping them grow, so I am not doing my job as their teacher. My students are making me a better teacher, imagine if we asked all of our students what grades means to them?

aha moment, Be the change, being a teacher, being me, Passion, Personalized Learning, student voice

What Story Are You Telling?

February 25, 2015 Pernille Ripp

My students told me to stand proud. To make sure I made eye contact. To speak up and smile. Maybe play music and crack a joke. To do all of the things I ask them to do every time they speak. “Tell them what we tell you…we need to change school, no joke”

I stand today, privileged to speak to other educators about the way we do education, about the things we may want to change. I stand today ready to carry my students’ words out into the world. I stand today, nervous and with butterflies in my stomach, knowing that those things my students tell me day after day now have an audience to be passed on to. I don’t want to let them down.

Yet, I am not alone. All of us that write, all of us that speak, all of us that go out and discuss education whether globally or locally, we carry the words of our students with us. We carry the awesome responsibility that comes with being in classrooms or schools every day. We carry the knowledge of what may work work and what definitely doesn’t. We carry the words students give us so that they have a voice. We carry the stories of our students and what they do every day. We carry their words when they can’t.

So before we speak of THAT kid that drove us crazy. Before we speak of THAT class that just wouldn’t listen. Before we speak about THAT school that didn’t work; remember that we choose what the narrative of education is. Remember that within our words we carry all of their words, all of their thoughts, all of their hopes. We just have to decide what we share with the world. We decide what story is told about education; one of frustration or one of change. The choice is always ours.

aha moment, assumptions, authentic learning, Be the change, being a teacher, education reform

What I Need to Change

February 24, 2015 Pernille Ripp

I was going to write about all of the things we have been doing to try to break down the barriers to poetry in class. All of the eye rolls I have been seeing, the grunts and groans. The many “Roses are red…” poems I have sen in the last few days as I ask them to write me a poem, any poem, just write something. I was going to write about how many of my students hate poetry because of all of the rules we have forced upon them in our pursuit of helpfulness and understanding. I was going to write about how my students are slowly inching further away from a disinterest or total hate to a small interest or even like when it comes to listening to poetry. Writing it is an entirely different battle.

But I decided that this was bigger than that. This moment, in our classrooms, is bigger than that.

It is not that my students are the only ones that hate poetry. In fact, some of them do, some of them don’t.

It is not that my students are the only ones who hate writing. Hate reading. Hate book clubs. Hate English. Some of them do, some of them don’t.

It is not that my students are finally expressing their hatred not to be mean or out of spite, but so we can do something about it.

It is not that my students are different from most students.

It is more that I have had the same conversations every year.

It is more that every kid has something they hate about school because of choices I have made, choices we have made, when we decided to teach a certain way.

It is more that student curiosity seems to have been drowned out by our carefully planned lessons.

That inquiry and critical thinking have been buried by the pursuit of the one right answer.

That we have taught students that school is black and white while life is multicolored.

That we tell them to sit still so much that they forget their own voice.

That we make all of the choices for them and then get frustrated when they cannot create on their own.

That is what I need to write about because that is what I have discussed with my students. That is what teaching poetry has revealed so far. That is what I need to change.

Who knew poetry would be the place my students found their voice.