Category: Be the change

Be the change, reflection

The 4 Education Trends I Hope Stay in 2012

Pernille Ripp
2012 is coming to a close and along with it, I hope certain trends in education also fade out of our memories.  While these may seem innocent enough, I think it is time we make a conscious effort to truly leave them behind.

  • Teacher bashing.  While most people think teacher bashing only happens outside of education, I think it is time we admit how much teacher bashing happens within our own school walls.  We have enough outside sources that fight us all, it is time we stop the in-fighting among ourselves.
  • Automatically viewing all changes negatively.  While I know not all changes are created equal, I think it is important we give change a chance, or at least reserve our judgment until we have heard the full idea.  Then we can form educated opinions and work from there.
  • Sharing just how overwhelmed we are at every chance.  While venting is healthy, I think when it is all we are focused on it loses its helpfulness.  Then we are not releasing our worries but just magnifying them.  And yes, I know that being a teacher is super hard right now, I am right there with everyone, but I find when I talk about it all the time that is all I feel and what good does that do?  Now sharing our frustrations in an effort to get help, new ideas, or work through – that I can stand behind.
  • And finally, and this is the one I have to work on in particular, thinking we cannot change anything because we are only teachers.  We are stronger than we think and together we can make a difference not only for us as educators, but also for our students.  I will continue to fight for the right kind of change every chance I get, I will continue to fight from within, I will continue to stand up to the testing obsessed system because my students deserve it.

If you had not had a chance to read George Couros’ post “3 Ideas That Will Not Change Schools” please do, this post was definitely inspired by that.

Be the change, no homework, reflection

No Homework – 2 Years Later

Pernille Ripp
Two years ago, I decided I had had enough of taking my students’ time outside of school.  Two years ago I decided that I had had enough with worksheets, meaningless extra assignments, and sending work home with kids well knowing that they probably could not do it.  I had had enough of giving kids zeroes and A’s never quite knowing who had done the work or whether they truly “got” it.  So I stopped assigning home work  or at least tried to.  You see, stopping homework in out test obsessed, common core aligned  standards based education is not that easy.  It looks great on paper and I wish I could say that my students have no homework, but it is not quite true.  They have limited homework because there are some things I cannot get around.  So here are some lessons I have learned in the last 2 years:
  • Common core aligned does not mean more focused, it usually means more pages to get through.  Our math curriculum went from averaging 3 pages a lesson to 5 – I now rush through them so that students can have some work time in class and I can reteach the concepts I need with small groups but I am sad to say there is almost always math homework at the end of the day.  And don’t even get me started on the crazy amount of pages in Lucy Calkins stuff.
  • We don’t have enough time to read.  I used to have a luxurious 30 minutes of independent reading built into my day where students actually just read.  I would confer with small groups, read one on one with students and move about leisurely discussing strategies with them.  Now we have to have guided lessons, small groups, write about our reading and one-on-one discussions within 45 minutes.  I am lucky if my kids get 15 minutes of pure reading time so every week I ask them to read 210 minutes throughout the week.  I don’t care what they read, as long as they read, and no, they do not have a log to fill out, we have the honor system.
  • Kids will struggle with getting things done in time even when you give them classtime.  We do spelling as our morning work so every day students have 10 minutes to work on it with being due on Friday.  For most students this is no problem and they finish by Wednesday  but those that have a hard time focusing, getting started, staying motivated; they still end up with late work.    And not just for spelling, when I give students in-class time to finish science responses, do social studies projects and so forth, there are always some that struggle with deadlines.  Every week I have this in my classroom and I am still not sure what to do about it.  
  • Taking recess is still against my beliefs.  I very, very, very rarely ask a student to stay in during recess and if I do it is to discuss something behaviorally with them.  However, once in a while a child gets so behind, so lackadaisical about getting work done and using their time wisely that they have to stay in.  So far this year it has happened once and only after I had given the child a whole week to finish the work outside of school.  Once they were done with the work though; out they go.
  • Some parents will want more work, some parents will want less.  To no fail some always feel I don’t give their kids enough work to practice their skills or get them ready for middle school, while others still think it is too much.  There is no magical way of making everybody happy, but only contuing to communicate what we are doing and why.  
  • I still believe homework is unnecessary but boy it can be hard to get rid of.   Our curriculum is written to be extremely difficult to get through in a regular school day so I battle this every day.  But it gets better every year as I get wiser and smarter about how my students can accomplish their learning goals and show me they have mastered something.  I do not use worksheets outside of class and we do much more project based learning with student and teacher determined learning goals.  

I have never lost my belief that homework should be banned in school and as I continue to work through my new curriculum, I maintain that belief. I do not believe that homework is the only way to teach students time management, responsibility, and to show me they have learned something.  There are many ways to do that, but to do it well you have to tear apart your curriculum, tear apart your expectations of what a finished product looks like, and tear apart what you think students can accomplish.

If you are looking at going no homework but unsure of what to do, reach out, I will gladly help if I can.  

Be the change, reflection

Remember That Kid and His Big Dream

Pernille Ripp
Lat Friday, the day of the awful shootings in Connecticut  something quite magical was happening in my classroom.  As teachers, this is one of the biggest oxymorons we face; the world may be tragic but inside our walls we have children jumping up and down out of joy.  My students did not know what was going on somewhere else in a school similar to ours, all they knew was that Joel Stave, a quarterback for the Badgers was coming to visit them.

Remember that kid and his big dream?  Well, because of you he received letters from 3 football players all urging him to continue to push himself and the ultimate prize; the visit.  To see his face light up when he got to play football with Joel actually brought tears to my eyes.  
As teachers we do everything we can to support our students, to help them believe in themselves, and to push them further, but this one?  This one I could not have pulled off if it wasn’t for other teachers that care as much as I do, three of them being Nete Schmidt, John Sterner, and Jason Bretzmann.  I promise to pay it forward.
Friday evening I wrote this letter to Joel to make sure he knew what a difference he made:
Hi Joel,

I cannot quite find the words to describe how much your visit meant to my class on Friday.  This will be the moment they remember about 5th grade.  All weekend I have received emails from parents thanking me and telling me how incredibly excited their kid was.  
Friday, with the terrible shooting in Connecticut  was a very hard day to be a teacher.  We all knew, but had to hide it from our students.  The school was actually in lock down mode when you got there and no kids were allowed on the computers as we tried to shield them from the news.  Your visit meant that my kids had the best day possible and for that I will ever be grateful.
I spoke to your student manager about how big of a deal you coming was and he commented that he forgets how much people look up to you because he sees you on a regular basis. To my kids, you are the biggest role model they have ever met and the way you were with them showed your genuine heart.  Perhaps when you retire from football you should consider becoming a teacher – it is horribly paid in money, but soulfilling in experiences.
Whatever happens to you, you should know that you matter.  And how you are matters.  Thank you for taking time out to see us.  Best of luck to you, you will have 20 diehard fans rooting for you in the Rosebowl.

Thank you everyone; you matter.


Be the change, reflection

We Are A Broken Nation

Pernille Ripp
We expect our children to grow old. To have lives, wives and perhaps even children of their own.  we expect to see them through the terrible two’s, their first day of school, the dreaded teen years and to walk across a college stage diploma in hand full of dreams.  But our children don’t always get to live out our dreams.  Sometimes our children are taking from us much sooner than we ever feared; a parent’s worst nightmare.

Like so many others, I watched the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary unfold via Twitter on Friday, crying in front of my computer while my students were at music.  The hushed conversations between teachers quickly took over the school and yet our kids walked around happy it was Friday.  Happy lunch was soon, happy that Christmas is coming and that there is a chance of snow, completely unaware of the unspeakable evil happening at another school just like ours.  We were told to keep all students off computers, to not mention anything, so we sent them out the door with high fives  and great jobs, and see you on Monday.  Then we grieved after they left and huddled together asking the tough question; what would we do if it happened to us?

The truth is we don’t know.  We too have been trained in drills of what to do, but I know it is not enough.  We will be sitting ducks just like everyone else.  My husband asked me if I was going to take a hammer to school to leave in the room, he wasn’t joking, because the truth is, we have nothing to protect ourselves with.  A locked door, a secretary who buzzes you in, a name tag cannot protect our children.

I read about the teacher who hid her kids and lied about their whereabouts and I wonder if I would be so brave?  I wonder if I could react and protect as instinctually and fearlessly as she must have.  I hope I could.

On Monday, school resumes and my students will tell me about the killings.  They will have some questions, I am sure, but I will leave most of the discussions up to parents.  I will tell them that school is safe even if I have no way of knowing.  I will be told by my district whether to change anything in our safety procedure and soon we will be lulled back into our sense of safety and we will again begin to gripe about the small things.  We will move on because that is what we do.  We will have cries of change needed yet our funding will continue to be cut resulting in fewer teacher, fewer psychologists, fewer guidance counselors – the very people we need in schools to prevent tragedies.

We are a broken nation when our school becomes the ultimate cry for help from someone with a horrific plan.  We are a broken nation when this continues to happen and we change nothing.  We are a broken nation when it takes multiple murders to get our attention.  How can we begin to heal?

PS:  If you have the time to read another post, please read “Preparing for the Worst Case Scenario” by Kris Still on Beth Still’s blog.  And then forward it to your school district.

Be the change, reflection

I Get So Sick Of Being the Change

Pernille Ripp
Sometimes I get sick of being the change, of leading the charge, of paving the way.  I get sick of all the bumps and bruises from trying something new, from being honest and sharing it with whomever will read.  I get sick of having to defend Twitter as something more than conceitedness or hobnobbing with people “that aren’t really my friends ”  I get tired of explaining again why I don’t take recess, why I have a hard time bribing kids, and why grades – whether A’s or 4’s – really don’t belong in education.

I get so tired that I make myself believe that perhaps if I shut my mouth the path would get easier.  That if I stopped blogging about it all perhaps no one would notice and I could just do my things, my way.  That perhaps if I just swallowed a big dose of reality and learned that what is happening now in education is what will be for years to come and I better just get used to it, then my life would be easier.

But then I am told to share my story.  A friendly stranger ask me why.  Schools ask me to help them out as they struggle with the same things I do and I regain my faith in the change and being the change.  I knew this path wouldn’t be easy.  I knew this path would sometimes double back, twist and turn on itself, and lose me.  Yet, I follow it because I see where the path leads; to change, the right kind.  The kind many are hoping will come.  I have to keep believing and I have to share my stories so that others will know it is ok to share theirs.

Clarification:  This post is more a comment on trying to change how education is done in general, rather than people around me.  I think it is tough for anyone out there trying to change the massive politically motivated education policy machine and that is what I was trying to address here.

image from icanread