Be the change – Page 61

Another child stands by me asking for my help, 5 seconds after the assignment has been given, “But I just don’t get it, Mrs. Ripp…” And I ask, because this is the 3rd time today that this child has come up to me immediately into work time, “Well, did you try?” She hasn’t, she is scared, and she admits it readily; “Please don’t circle it. Please don’t mark it wrong.” So upset, she raises her voice, pleads with me as if my circle matters. As if my marker holds the power. And I am stumped because how does a 5th grader get that scared of failing?

The truth is we are doing this to kids, we, this society in pursuit of perfection is doing it to our kids, because it was done to us as well. My daughter, who granted is only a wise two and a half year old is not afraid to fail. She gets frustrated sure, but she tries and tries and then sometimes tries again. We encourage this at home, urging her on, urging her to explore, to pick herself up. Again, again, again. Will she be the child in 8 years that stands petrified in front of me, asking for help because trying seems too daunting?

No teacher or parent tries to make their child afraid of failure. Yet our practices in schools support this notion that failure is the worst thing that can happen. An incorrect answer on a test pulls down your grade, you get enough, and you get an F for failure stamped across it for the world to see. That F means nothing valid, nothing worth reading here, nothing worth. Homework that is meant to be practice is tabulated, calculated, and spit out on our report cards. The child who gets the answer right is heralded as smart, the child who gets it wrong is told to keep trying and maybe they will get it someday.

How we run our classrooms directly affect how students feel about themselves. About how they feel about their own capabilities and their own intelligence. I fail all the time in front my kids, not on purpose, I try stuff and it doesn’t work and we talk about it. And yet, I am not perfect either. I catch myself in using practice problems as assessment, where really they should be viewed just as practice. I praise the kids that get it right and sometimes don’t praise the ones that kept persisting but never reach a correct answer. I don’t alway have enough time to explore all of the options so I guide the kids toward success knowing that some venues will lead them to failure. I shield them from it sometimes because I don’t want to crush their spirits.

We have to stand up for our children and we have to turn this notion around that failure is the worst thing that can happen. Failure is not the worst; not trying is. We have to keep our kids believing in themselves and having enough confidence to try something. If we don’t we are raising kids that follow all of the rules, that never take risks, that never discover something new. And that failure is too big to remedy.

Be the change, being a teacher, education reform

An Easy Statement

October 8, 2011 Pernille Ripp

You know what is easy to say? That our education system is broken. It is also easy to say that it is because of standardized tests, because of politicians, too much red tape and clueless administrators. We need more money, we need smaller class sizes, more time, more enthusiasm. I could go on listing all of the things we need.

And yet, at some point we must own up to our own responsibility. At some point we must change our statements and no longer just say that the system is broken. At some point we must say, I am part of the solution. That perhaps not everything in the system is broken but that there are flaws and we can do something about it.

Saying the system is broken is too easy. It removes responsibility. Take the responsibility, be the change, and then spread the word.

Be the change, reflection, students

Stop Seeing Red Cars

September 30, 2010 Pernille Ripp

You know that kid I am about to write about. That pencil swirling, head lay downing, always poking kid. He always has en excuse for why he is doing whatever he is doing that is greatly annoying you at the time. And I say “he” only because I have never had a “she” but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. So you try your most patient tone of voice, you conference one on one on your feelings and how they are hurt whenever he does that thing he does so well. He promises sometimes to get better but remember it really wasn’t his fault. And you don’t believe him but you give him the benefit of the doubt, after all, you love all children. 5 minutes later he is doing those things again; not listening, fiddling, goofing off. You panic and think you must be boring, non-enigmatic, sleep inducing and yet a little voice tells you that he is the problem, not you.

So you try a different approach; a stern warning; we will call your parents. And yet those parents where the ones that told you their son was a little strange, good luck with him. He doesn’t seem to care too much about that either, after all, they have had that same phone call many times before. So you wish you had a punishment system, some sort of way you could take something away from him until he behaved. Until he conformed. Until he stopped doing those things. And then you realize, hey wait, stop seeing red cars.

In my first teaching year, I had to take a mentor class, and although some times it was more a social gathering than educational, one video stands out. In it the narrator speaks of the “red car syndrome” as in you buy a red car and all of a sudden when you drive it, all you ever see are all of the other red cars. Well, inherently we as teachers see red cars in our classrooms too. You hone in on that kid and instead of ever seeing all of the improvements, or the struggle to act the right way, you only see the problems, the slips, the slides, the just not acting the perfect way. You see only the behavior you loathe, that upsets you. So stop! Be aware of it, speak to him about it, and then realize you are hyper-focused on him. This kid did not wake up that morning and decide this is how he would act in school; you are after all the next teacher in a long line of teachers before you. This may take years to help him with, or even better yet, find a way to make it work. Don’t let it overwhelm you, don’t let it bring you down, but more importantly do not take your frustration out on the kid. After all, he would probably rather be a perfect child too (which by the way, perfect children do not exist). So stop seeing red cars, instead embrace, celebrate and realize that we are all human beings, quirks and all, even if that human being happens to be 9 years old.

aha moment, Be the change, students

Anyone Can Learn – Aviva’s Aha Moment

September 25, 2010 Pernille Ripp

This week’s Aha Moment is shared by Aviva Dunsiger, also known on Twitter as @grade1, and she is a a Grade 1 teacher in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. She is an active member of my PLN who helps many teachers both new and old. She taught Kindergarten for eight years before making the move to Grade 1. Aviva loves using various Web 2.0 tools in her classroom to make learning more meaningful for students. As she says: Through my Grade 1 Website, Grade 1 Blog, Professional Blog, and Student Blogs, I share my own learning with others, and my students share their learning too. Many thanks to Pernille Ripp (@4thGrdTeach) for asking me to do the Guest Blog Post this week. I’m excited to share my Aha Moment with all of you!

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to teach. When I was in Kindergarten and Grade 1, I used to pretend to play school, and I even wrote my lessons on the wall. There’s a house somewhere in Thornhill, Ontario that still has my Process Writing Lesson on the wall underneath numerous coats of paint.:)
School never came easily for me though, and while I always worked hard, I never seemed to make the grade. In Grade 2, I had a Psych Assessment done, and I found out that I had a non-verbal learning disability. I will never forgot the feedback from that Psych Assessment: I was told that due to the severity of my learning disability, I would always struggle with school, and I would be lucky if I even made it to college. In other words, forget about university, and forget about my dreams of becoming a teacher. I was devastated!

Looking back now, I guess that I could have given up at that point. I never did though. Despite having a really significant learning disability, I also had some really significant strengths. I learned how to capitalize on those strengths. My mom and step-dad helped teach me strategies to be successful in the classroom and to advocate for myself so that I got the accommodations that I needed to be successful too. I always spent double the amount of time on the homework as my peers, and in certain subjects, like geography, the lessons would often lead to tears and frustration, but I never gave up. I wanted to teach!

Thanks to self-advocacy, amazing support from home, and strategies that really worked, I ended up graduating from high-school on the honour roll, and I even got a scholarship to university. It was when I got the phone call from the President of Nipissing University offering me a Presidential Scholarship and a place in the Bachelor of Arts and Introduction to Teaching Program, that I had my Aha Moment: anyone can learn! As teachers, we just need to find a way to ensure that all students do learn. I cannot thank my wonderful teachers enough: they didn’t give up on me, and as a result, I never gave up on myself.

This is my tenth year teaching, and every year, I get a new group of students and a new opportunity to make a difference. My own experience has taught me that we can never give up on our students, and that we need to find a way to ensure that all of them succeed. At the bottom of all of my e-mails, I have this signature: “If they don’t learn the way you teach, teach the way they learn.” I am thankful for the teachers that did just this for me, and I will always do this for my students too!

aha moment, Be the change, new teacher

You are Not Alone – Lisa’s Aha Moment

September 19, 2010 Pernille Ripp

This weeks aha moment is shared by Lisa Dabbs one of the most inspiring and essential members of my PLN. She is an Educational Coach and Consultant and also a former Elementary School Principal and Fed Prog.administrator. Lisa has a B.A. in Child Development and a M.Ed in Educational Administration. but started her career as a Kindergarten teacher. She has also worked as a Project Director of a Language and Literacy program. Lisa is also the creator of the new teacher chat on Twitter #ntchat, which is NOT just for new teachers and involved in many other projects. More importantly, Lisa is a friend and mentor to many and I was honored to have her share her moment with us. Her blog is a must add to your RSS and she is always a must follow to any new educators that stumbles upon Twitter.

Teaching and Mentoring are my Passions!
Sometimes though, good teaching is lost in the busyness of life or due to challenging times, struggling students, feisty kids or tragically; lack of support.

Today is the sharing of my Aha moment. I’m so honored to be asked by Pernille Ripp to guest post on this “moment”. The moment I truly knew that I needed to start a “blog to mentor”. This came in February of this year when I sent a response to a young, new, would be teacher who posted on an education website that she was “Losing hope”…

The teacher will remain anonymous, but the cry for help is so typical of many, creative, enthusiastic teachers I’ve met over the years. Starting their careers passionate about teaching, only to be cut off at the knees by one simple fact: the lack of a mentor who is willing to support, guide and inspire.

The teacher started the post by saying that they had a dream. A dream to be the best teacher they could be. To be the kind of teacher that students would be inspired by. Unfortunately, there were no clear expectations set for this teacher, and worse, no support. This teacher’s perception was that they would be supported, as a first year teacher. Not an unfair expectation by any means. Instead they were placed in a “sink or swim” position. So this teacher sank. And so did my heart…This is absolutely not what you do to new teachers.

Here is a bit of the response that I posted to this young teacher who asked for “positive and encouraging words”:
When I read your words, “I believe I was under the illusion that I had support and help from all angles, when in reality, I hadn’t felt more alone and lost.” My heart went out to you. I was an elementary school principal for 14 years. During those years, I consistently spent time mentoring, supporting, guiding my teachers. If you read the research on why young people like yourself leave the teaching profession, it turns out that it is exactly for those reasons you describe. A school should work to foster a culture where its teachers collaborate and learn from one another. This is at the heart of how educators grow as professionals. However, some of my administrative colleagues still struggle with this piece. We need to do so much better.

I entered the teaching profession at 24 as a Kindergarten teacher. I was fortunate to have come from a long line of educators. However, even with this “DNA” I still encountered a great deal of frustration and anxiety in my first year. I too am a VERY creative person, and I had many ideas about how I wanted to teach my class. I quickly learned, by observing the culture of my school, and having to share a classroom, that I had to harness that creativity into focused, structured, well designed lesson plans. I did so by incorporating those creative ideas in such a way that measurable outcomes were clear and evident. This meant including, sadly, assessments of my Kinders, even “back in the day.” I used a few highly recommended teaching tools from my Child Development course work, as well as others that were recommended to me. I also asked to “observe” other teachers at my school to get a feel for, once again, the culture of the school and what was going to be expected of me. I lived and breathed “teaching” those first few years, and spent nights and weekends reading, creating, planning, all things “Kinder.” The kicker is I too felt very alone, as I did not have a supportive principal, or mentor colleague. My kinder team member was a tenured teacher who believed in “kill and drill” for Kindergarten kids and I was mortified!
The bottom line is that my first few years were rough!

What made me stick it out? I held on to my dream, desire and passion. I held on to the knowledge that I knew the research about what was good for children. I didn’t give up, even when 6 of my 8 K teacher team talked about me behind my back. Did I have a mentor teacher? No. Was it hard? Extremely. But I kept pressing forward because I believed in myself and cared deeply for my students.

We know so much more now about how to retain and support new teachers. The research is very clear and you need a good mentor (or two). You don’t have to stick it out alone, nor should you.
So, in the meantime, I extend a hand to you, as a “creative” tenured educator, if you’d like an on-line mentor. This is my passion. I’m here to offer help and HOPE. Don’t let this one difficult experience defeat you. You are not alone in the “tunnel”. The light is just up ahead. It’s time to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back in the game! I can hear them calling your name!

My Aha moment…my desire to “blog to mentor” and chronicle through photos, interviews and a few short words, what amazing teachers are doing to inspire is still evolving. The heartache this young woman felt, still resonates for me. It continues to motivate me to work to inspire, mentor, equip, teachers to “teach with soul.” I also hold fast to the belief that no educator should have to go through the challenges of the early years of teaching alone…ever. Through my blog and also on Twitter, I hope that I can come alongside and Mentor. The work ahead is challenging…but I’m excited to be on the journey!
When you reflect on your early years of teaching, how did you make it though the tough times?
So grateful to you, Pernille for inviting me to share, my passion.

Be the change, grades, reflection

Rulebreaker

September 18, 2010 Pernille Ripp

I wasn’t born a rule breaker. In my hometown of Bjerringbro, Denmark, population 7,390, I did not strive to be a rebel without a cause. In fact I was your average tomboy, a middle of the roader, a child deemed living below their potential. I followed the rules set forth because that is what I was told to do. Not specifically by people, but as a child, you just know what the rules are and what the expectations were. Of course, there were small rebellions such as coming home just a few minutes late, or perhaps “forgetting” to do my spelling words (I knew them already so why did I have to write them out 5 times?). So my childhood was not an adventurous one and my adult life seemed to be kind of middle of the road as well. That is until I met my husband, Brandon.

Oh, the tales of love can inspire excitement or convulsions in people. Mine usually gets giggles and aw shucks. You see it was the classic tale of bartender meets bouncer and the rest they say is history. And yet something fundamentally changed for me when I met Brandon. He asked me what I planned to do with my life, and although many had asked that same question before, including my dear mother, with him, I really wanted to impress. I became a teacher, knowing I wanted to reach children, change them, inspire them, listen to them. And yet, I followed the rules. Good teachers graded. Good teachers rewarded. Good teachers told students that if their homework was not done then there would be consequences.

In my gut, I knew something was wrong and yet these were the rules and by signing up to teach, I had signed up for the rules. Never did I stop to question those rules, why should I? They obviously worked, until they didn’t. Last year, my class was a mixed bag of emotions. Various big personalities that needed a lot of love and a lot of patience at times. I learned more in that year of what type of a person I am, than I think I could have in any other profession. I started the year the same way, detailing how to get an A. How to earn a class party, how to get on the awesome board. Basically, how to be the best student they could possibly be. Or did I? Really all I did was tell them the rules and then tell the punishment there would be for breaking those rules. How is that for inspiring the youth of America?

So this summer, after having accepted the fantastic challenge of a combination classroom and joining Twitter searching for others, searching like me, I came upon a tweet from Jeremy (@MrMacnology) to Joe (@Joe_Bower). I stopped because I was surprised. They tweeted about perhaps not grading, perhaps not rewarding, perhaps breaking the rules. I lurked on their conversations, wondering if they would not mind another person asking questions. Finally I held my breath and wrote to Jeremy asking if I could ask him questions. We have collaborated since on a regular basis and I am proud of knowing him.

Grading degrades. It tells a student that no matter how hard they worked, if it does not fit into our rubric, our vision, our plan for them, then they may not get the success they so hoped for. Grades tell students that even though their parents are violently fighting and they can’t do their homework because they are scared, they lose 10% off their grade and get a zero if I don’t get it in a week. Grades tell students that even though they devour books, when they leave the title and author off on a book report, they must not be A+ readers. Grading tells students that have way too much responsibility at the young age of 10, that I don’t care that they had to watch their 4 younger brothers and sisters instead of doing their homework.

We know this as educators. We see the defeat in students’ eyes when they get that grade they did not hope for. We see it in parent/teacher conferences when parents’ zero in on the bad grades rather than all the plusses we so meticulously planted on the report card. You cannot blame the parents; after all, they were part of this system too. We all are. Well, I am not anymore. Or at least I strive to break the rules on this one. I strive to follow my instinct and speak to students about their successes. Listen when they tell me answers that they didn’t know how to spell right. Think when they give me an unexpected explanation. I may not have been born a rule breaker but I have certainly become one. It is in the best interest of my students and myself that I break these rules. There is a better way to teach, we just must not be afraid to try it. Will you break the rules with me?