Be the change – Page 56

Do You Have to Be Connected to Be A Great Teacher?

April 8, 2013 Pernille Ripp

This morning I read the great post Excuses, Excuses…Will a Child’s Future Wait written by Tom Whitford, a man I am lucky enough to call friend. As I read it and nodded all the way through it, I kept thinking how right Tom was, and yet, when we discuss people not telling us they have time for social media, or time to learn about new technology, we also have to look at how many people don’t see these things as a necessity to being a great teacher.

In fact, the whole notion of being a great teacher, administrator, or whichever role one plays in education seems to be split between two large camps. There are those that believe that as long as they deliver relevant content every day, cover the standards, get through what they need (even artfully so) that then they are doing their job. That is what makes them a great educator. Then there are those that believe that to be a great educator, one must be connected through something (social media, local group whatever), should be researching new ideas, and should definitely be implementing those. Then one can be a great educator.

Those are two very different camps to be in. One sees no need for outside connections and the other sees the creative urgency in having them. One does not find the time necessary to make connections because it is not deemed essential to being a great teacher. Whereas the other wholeheartedly believes in the necessity of these connections and thus takes the time to do so. I wonder if the unconnected educator can be just as great as the connected one, I tend to lean toward a resounding yes because of what I see on a daily basis; plenty of “unconnected” educators that are still phenomenal teachers. And yet, I wish they were connected because so many of them have great things to share.

So when I come across people that do not understand why I tweet, blog, or connect with other that I may never meet, I often wonder how they get inspired. I know where I draw my inspiration from; my students, my family, and my PLN. Where do those that do not have a PLN get theirs? I know I cannot convince them of the power of dedicating time to connecting, sharing, reflecting in a an open forum until they deem it important enough to dedicate their time. And that is an entirely different mindset to cultivate, so how do we do that?

Be the change, Reading, reflection

What the #Nerdybookclub Taught Me About Reading

March 29, 2013 Pernille Ripp

I have always been slightly nerdy, ask my oldest friends and they will tell you stories of eye rolls whenever I discussed the latest sci fi flick I couldn’t wait to see. Or get me started on a favorite author and watch. I haven’t ever been a geek, I would have to be really good at math for that, but a nerd, that I could embrace. My adulthood didn’t change my nerdy ways but only sophisticated them. I could now pass ubernerdy things of as cool and stand behind them tall. And when being a nerd became kind of cool, I was so nerdy, that even my husband still laughed a little bit at me when i got too out there.

So when I fell into the Nerdy Book Club I knew I was at home. All of these book lovers in one group, oh and the hashtag and the chats; I was home. And yet even I could not have realized how much the Nerdy Book Club would change me and the way I teach.

So The Nerdy Book Club taught me that

It is okay to get really, really excited about a book and want to give it to everyone I meet. I am thinking of you “The One and Only Ivan.”

It is ok to want to talk books with friends, even if those friends are 20 years younger than you.

It is ok to bring in my books to school and perhaps sneak a chapter or two during recess.

It is ok to weed out my library and finally get rid of the books that no one has touched, no one will touch, and to give them to others who might.

It is ok to not do book talks.

It is ok to not do whole group books unless it is so deep and so rich that the whole class will actually stay engaged.

It is ok to tweet out pictures of new books you have received because you are so gosh darn excited about reading them.

It is ok to tweet authors and hope they will respond to you.

It is ok to have your class tweet authors and hope even harder that they will respond to them.

It is ok to have a pile of books beside your bed that never quite seems to diminish and yet entices you to sit down and read every time you pass by it.

It is ok to change from a clothes shopaholic to a bookaholic as long as you don’t go broke.

It is ok to watch your home library start to bleed into your classroom library because some of your kids are ready for a bigger challenge.

It is ok to do book challenges as long as they do not suck.

It is ok to not love a book and tell students that.

It is ok to make book trailers rather than book projects.

It is ok to think books, breathe books, talk books even if no one is listening or cares.

It is ok to have the reading taste of a 5th grade boy.

It is ok to think that reading and loving books is the most important thing we can ever model for our students and our own children.

Thank you Nerdy Book Club

Be the change, change, students

Where Did the Year Go? It Is Not Too Late to Make Changes

March 22, 2013 Pernille Ripp

Today we go on spring break and as I keep telling my new teacher colleague, after spring break the yesar seems to speed up and disappear before our eyes. All of a sudden even the most experienced teacher starts to feel like they are not doing enough, have not gotten where they though they would, and we intensify our desire to teach more, do more, push more. Yet, the last few months of the year is not the time to get stuck in routines or expectations, for me it has always been the time to really explore, push my students, and create.

So it is not too late to

Start blogging with your students. Even 3 months of blogging is an incredible experience. This year with my maternity leave we didn’t start until mid-November and yet my students have taken our blogging to a new level amassing more than 1,600 comments. Look at my friend Rob Hunt’s class, they just started a few weeks ago and are already master bloggers. If you need help on why and how please see this page.
Get a class Twitter account. I admit it, I was a skeptic Even though I love Twitter, I didn’t see much point in my students as a class being on there as well. Perhaps it just seemed like too much. On a whim, I went against my own senses and did create them one @MrsRippsClass and it has been amazing to see what they have used it for. They have tweeted authors and received replies (!!!), They have asked for book recommendations, recommended great videos, and shared their live learning I am already excited about what else we can think to use Twitter for.
Do something hands-on. I know we tend to pull the reins tighter as students get more squirrly but I have found that if I give them even more autonomy choice, and freedom in our classroom they live up to the challenge. Now is the time to really push them.
Put it all together. I really start to focus more on themes in our learning and bridging it all during these last few months. One example is their dream city project currently happening; a fantastic exploration of scale, area, and models combining math, art, and science. The best part? The students don’t even know how much work their brains are doing.
Give them authentic responsibility. We love doing Mystery Skypes and have become pretty good at them, yet sometimes they just fall apart on us. The students have taken on the roles as discussion facilitators and teachers and have changed our process quite a bit. They are living up to the responsibility I am offering up to them and see the results directly in their work. I step out of the picture.
Start planning for Innovation Day. My students know this won’t happen until May but their wheels are already turning. They cannot wait to do this day of intense student-driven passion-led exploration day and I cannot wait to see what they will come up.
Incorporate Genius Hour. 20% Projects, Genius Hour, Hour of Power, whatever you choose to call it but look for opportunities within your curriculum to have students self-explore topics. The concept is simple; research, create, and deliver all within an hour of the week. We will be doing this in social studies after break.
Get involved globally. Whether through quad blogging, signing up for the Global Read Aloud (which won’t actually happen until October), or doing Projects by Jen; do something global. My students are currently working on a video introduction of our classroom for a 12th grade in Singapore, contact facilitated through Twitter. They love figuring out how to showcase our room in a positive manner and it is all student-led.

Now is the time to push your students, have a ton of fun, and let them be independent learners. Trust me you will not regret it.

Be the change, edcamp

So We Ran an EdCamp and What Did We Learn?

February 24, 2013 Pernille Ripp

Yesterday was one of the “Oh my gosh I can’t believe it is finally here” kind of days with the coming of EdcampMadWI – or EdCamp Madison as we preferred to call it. After many months of thinking, hard work, and definitely team work, the day came and passed in such a blur, it felt as if it was my wedding day. The same nerves of anticipation and then a blur of people to speak to, thank, and even a presentation or two and then it was over and with just great memories to look back upon. So while there are many posts out there on how to plan your Edcamp, I thought I would offer up a few smaller lessons we learned along the way.

Think small. This idea started out with Jess having a lunch time conversation and then grew from there. Our core team was 4 people; Jess (@jhenze44), Kaye (@MiddleLevelEd), Emily (@MsDittmar) and myself. That was it, and it was nice. Because we knew it was just us 4 people taking care of most things, we also knew explicitly who was going to take care of what and when. Accountability was there and that to me was half the battle.
Create a Google group just for the organizers. This way all emails get archived and it is easy to find. Saved us so much time.
Tell sponsors specifically what they should sponsor. We started out soliciting sponsors by just asking for something, toward the end, we were asking for specific items to be covered. This worked much better than just crossing your fingers and hoping for something good.
Ask other edcamp planners for help. I was lucky enough to be able to ask many great people for advice; @mbteach – one of the original founders of edcamp and @TamL17, one of the edcamp Milwaukee planners. They have done it before and thus know exactly what to do or not do.
Think outside of education. We had many local sponsors like Market Street Diner that wanted to help even though they have nothing to do with education, so don’t be afraid to ask.
Trust your volunteers. Kaye was phenomenal at recruiting volunteers and then overseeing them, but truth is, many of our volunteers knew exactly what needed to get done without being told. So get quality people and then trust them to do their thing.
Make goodybags. We had a lot of stickers, pens, app codes etc to hand out to people but rather than raffle it all off which would have taken a long time, we instead created 49 goodybags. 20 were handed out to the first 20 people that proposed a session and then 29 were raffled off during lunch. At the end of the day we then only had some major prizes to give away rather than tons of stuff.
Set an example. I proposed a session on blogging, Jess did one on Evernote, and Emily did one on 20% projects. We found the time to do it and were still able to run the edcamp, it can be done.
Don’t marry your schedule. We had set a preliminary schedule but our opening took a lot less time than we anticipated so we had 1 1/2 hours for our first session instead of waiting for it to began. You run the edcamp; you can change the rules.
Meet people. I purposely tried to meet as many people as possible this time around rather than just stick to the few I know. I have never had so many great discussions about a variety of topics. Because you are an organizer you will be busier but also more visible take that opportunity to reach out to others and engage them in conversations.
Wear sensible shoes. I wore my teaching shoes which happened to have a higher heel and then I rolled my ankle before the day began. Ouch. So next time, yup, I will be the one in sneakers.

Being an organizer of this EdCamp really deepened my love for this type of professional development even more. I now know exactly how much work goes into this “easy” day of learning and also how much its success depends on the excitement of its organizers and attendants. So in the end, we are happy to say that there will be a second annual #EdCampMadWI.

Be the change, Reading, reflection

Must We Be Passionate Readers to Teach Reading?

January 28, 2013 Pernille Ripp

image from icanread

I am standing in the book store staring at all of the books I want to read and bring into my classroom when a boy’s voice cuts through my thoughts, “Dad, can I get this book? Mr. Wischer says it is one of his favorites…” I immediately begin to smile as I poke my head over the shelf, you see, Mr. Wichser happens to be my 5th grade colleague, a brand new teacher, and obviously an influencer of book choices. The dad agrees and the student happily leaves the kid section, excited to read his new book.

I share the story with Brandon and once again look at my own pile of books eager to get home and get them read so that I can place them into the hands of my students. What I read matters, I know this because my students have told me so when they ask me for another book recommendation. At the moment they rely more on me than each other and this year I am finally up for that challenge as I consume more books than I ever have.

And yet, I don’t see many teachers discuss the books they are reading at the moment. I know we are so busy as teachers, I know we all have so much to implement and do, I know we have lives of our own. But where is the shared passion for reading? Where are the book recommendations for our classrooms? Are we too busy to read or are we too busy to recommend?

It leads to my final thoughts which I have no answer for; should we mandate that teachers of reading be passionate readers? Or at the very least stay on top of the current books appropriate and engaging for our grade level? Can we go so far as to demand teachers who teach reading to actually read?

It seems that if you are a middle school teacher in a certain topic you are passionate about that topic. After all, why would you ever sign up to teach math if you hated it? But at the elementary level we don’t have to be passionate about it all or so it seems. We can pick and choose about what we would love to teach and then hope we mask it well enough so that students don’t pick up on our own disdain. We don’t have to like math or science and we don’t have to have read the books that line our classroom walls. But it that ok? Can we truly teach a passion for reading if we do not have it ourselves?

Be the change, students

10 Things That Helped Us Love Reading More

January 23, 2013 Pernille Ripp

image from icanread

I just cannot help myself from bubbling with excitement; my students are loving reading this year. And while I wish I had done something revolutionary to create this enthusiasm, I can claim no such feat. Through many small things reading has become our main focus point, our cherished time, the one thing we all look forward to no matter which day it is, no matter the weather, no matter the time. The students just want to read. So what has worked for us? Just a few things:

Share my own reading life. Many smart people have given reasons for why we should share our reading life with our students and they are all so right. To foster a love of reading in our room we have to be readers ourselves. We owe it to the students to know about books and share what we are reading as well.
Stay current. I had really fallen off the wagon of young adult books and it showed. I had no idea what was really being read by students at the moment and could only fake so many book recommendations. Now I am just as excited about the new Scholastic catalog or the random books students bring in; I just cannot wait to read my next book.
Share your books. I have many books in my house that I kept there so that students wouldn’t ruin them, not any more. Books are read by me as fast as I can get through them and then put into the hands of whichever student wants it. They take care of them as well as I can and I have gotten over if a book gets ruined, that just means someone was reading it.
Friday preview. Whenever I get a new book in my hands I do a preview of it; read the first chapter aloud to the class. Whereas I used to just read the back of the book and rattle off a recommendation, reading the first chapter aloud has proven to hook many students. We have 6 books with waiting lists in my room because of this.
Speed book review. Think speed dating but with book recommendations. Half my class sits with their current book and the other half visits each students to hear about their book. Every kid gets a minute or two depending on the day to share their book. This is a great way to spread the knowledge of great books and doesn’t take long.
Using book trailers. I love these ingenius little movies, even if they are poorly made. Now I often start my day showing a book trailer of a new book and it definitely gets the students excited about reading the book. I have also decided that for our genre study the culminating product will be a book trailer. No more reasons to ever even think about doing a book report again!
Read more series. I had never focused on whether I read stand alone book or series but now I realize the power of a great series. You read the first one and get hooked and you have many more books to read. I try to purchase as many quality series as I can and introduce them to the students.
Keep a read next list. In the back of our thoughtful logs we have a “What to read next” list that the students add to whenever they come across a new book. This way even if a book is currently being read they don’t forget about it.
Give them ownership. I don’t force students to read books they don’t like and we discuss what giving a book a fair chance looks like. Students have to know it is ok to abandon a book that is making them dislike reading, why waste their time finishing it? We can do mandatory texts in small group instruction instead.
Talk books. We talk about our books when we are waiting in line, walking to lunch, coming in in the morning and leaving at the end of the day. I am always asking students what they are reading and whether they like it. They love giving me recommendations this way and also showing me how much they read last night.