Category: being a teacher

aha moment, Be the change, being a teacher, being me

Ordinary Life

Pernille Schmidt Ripp

The man I love turned 50 yesterday.

A milestone event, cataclysmic in its ordinarity really. Just live long enough and you too will reach this day. And yet, it moves the ground beneath you, Makes you stop and pause. 50 is for grownups, for less life to live than lived (more than likely), for adult-decisions, and adult wisdom.

And so we celebrated in a busy ordinary day. Squeezed in a birthday song before drop off and pick up. Planted birthday flags in a school dinner for the Project Pig meal our daughter had been a part of with a local butcher (Danish schools are wild). Fell asleep on the couch at 9, filled with love, and also all of the responsibilities of two working adults with 4 children.

This morning, the alarm still rang at 4:30. The tea tasted the same. The bubble of excitement for the weekend felt familiar. He didn’t look any different. Our love hadn’t changed.

Life is lived in the ordinary. In the moments of familiarity, in the ease of the couch cushions that embrace us on good days and bad. In the routines that keep this neurodivergent household afloat. We long for freedom in our weekends. We celebrate the big moments, the befores and afters that mark the turning of the page. But really, life is lived in the ordinary.

It makes me think of our reading identities. That we may have the markers of the big experiences – the first book you couldn’t put down, the book you had to share, the first book we ever read to show the map of you. But the steps in between, those are ordinary events if we make it.

The invitation to read every day, for every child. The read aloud that children can count on will happen during the day, with voices, of course. The everyday access to books of their choosing. To have adults who care about the way they experience those books. The questions posed about who they are as readers and who they want to be. The books returned, the books abandoned, the books finished.

All ordinary moments.

Or they should be.

Because we build a life in the ordinary.

We build our reading identity in the flow of access. In the invitations into reading that happen every day. In the steady faith that reading is a place for all children, and adults, to find a home, even if it feels unfamiliar and wasteful right now.

The door remains open. There is no time limit on becoming a reader. There is no extraordinary celebration you must attend in order to be made a reader. You show up, you try, and you try again.

And we keep that door open for all. We fight the poor policies that shut the door on our readers. We fight the bans. We fight the lethargy.

We reserve the right to make reading an ordinary experience, one to be counted on, much like the school bell will ring. Kids should be able to count on that books, and reading, and moments of silence await them in our spaces. Not just on special days, but on every day.

This afternoon, I will run errands, get my flu and covid shots, and gather our family for our weekly Friday night movie night. If the movie is terrible, I will read alongside them, present but engaged in my own make believe world. Tomorrow morning, I will go run on a treadmill, do my laundry, and walk my garden.

Mundane perhaps, ordinary, yet extraordinary in that I get to live it.

I keep the door open to my ordinary life so that we can look back and see it for its beauty, for what it really was. A life lived between breaths. A reading journey built between pages.

Won’t you live an ordinary life with me?

Be the change, being a teacher

Good Enough

Pernille Schmidt Ripp

It’s been so long since I wrote, that I forgot my own website address.

It’s not that there haven’t been things to share, it’s more that I don’t know where to begin. That I have lived back home in Denmark for four years now, and been a teacher here for nearly three, and yet still feel like Bambi on ice. Trying to find my footing but knowing that I am more than likely spinning in circles and sliding farther away from my intended target.

So instead of trying to catch anyone up, don’t even know if there is anyone to catch up here, I am simply beginning again.

Hello and welcome to my thoughts about teaching, about life, about being a mom, a woman and living in this world right now with all its complications and wonders.

I am supposed to be the one that teaches children to read and write in my first grade classes. This is a burden I never wanted to have and yet the puzzle of trying to make the pieces click into place, of trying to help children find their way into story, and place their stories into the world, is one I relish. Will this little thing work? What if we do this? Try this? Stop this?

My students are both willing and unwilling participants; while happy to be in school still, they don’t get to choose that they should learn how to read or write. Like so many other things, that choice has been made for them.

But how we do it, together, that can be rife with choices. Some we are exploring cautiously, some we throw ourselves into just happy to try something new.

There is so much we can do together that I feel paralyzed at times. The weight of this wondrous world of literacy so heavy that I am not sure of what is best, what to do, what to keep. Imposter syndrome at its finest.

Because am I enough for everyone? Probably not. But can I show up and try my best, yes. Can I plan something every day that is one part of an expansive path that will expand these readers and authors? Can I teach strategies, offer practice, and pull them into the magic of what it means to read and write and leave the door so wide that even the most cautious of children can bumble through. Yes. Always yes.

I can observe, and tweak, and dream, and wonder and try. I can try again when it didn’t work. I can offer myself grace when it feels like too much to do and not enough me.

Because the power we have to experiment and pilot cannot be removed when we sit in our classrooms. We are allowed to try again again and again.

Because that’s really all this great big thing is. Whether it be life or teaching. An invitation to show up every day and try again. To leave knowing that you tried something. To leave in a way that makes you want to come back.

So I may not always know what I am doing, or even how to do something well, but I know how to show up. And for now, that’s going to be good enough.

being a teacher

How to Combat Summer Reading Slide with Students

Pernille Schmidt Ripp

I have 43 school days left and I can already feel it. That quiet guilt that starts sneaking in sometime around May. The one that whispers I did not do enough this year. That the readers in my care will walk out that door in June and the reading lives we built together will quietly unravel over the summer and somehow that will be on me.

I have been a teacher long enough to know that feeling well. And I have also been a teacher long enough to know that some of it is a lie.

The summer reading slide is real and the research is probably the reason why many of us carry this guilt. The largest national study in the US found that 52% of first through sixth graders experience summer learning slide, losing an average of 39% of their school-year reading gains over a single summer (Brighterly, 2025). Students in grades 3 to 5 lose roughly 20% of what they gained during the year, and younger readers are most at risk because decoding and word reading skills are particularly susceptible to decay without frequent practice (Scholastic). In Denmark, Hans Henrik Knoop at Aarhus University puts it plainly: seven weeks is a very long time, and what happens neurologically when you stop practicing is that you forget. The brain deteriorates when you do not use it. Danish research confirms that the gap between strong and developing readers widens over summer specifically because strong readers keep reading while others do not (Folkeskolen.dk).

That is the slide. And here is the part we need to sit with: the research is equally clear about what drives it. What happens inside a child’s home matters enormously. Whether the adults in their home prioritize reading, whether they have quiet and time and someone who models what it looks like to reach for a book, those things shape a summer in ways we simply cannot reach from our classrooms. The socioeconomic realities of our students’ summers are real. Some of our kids are working. Some are caring for siblings. Some are navigating things we will never fully see or understand. And some simply don’t like reading.

That guilt we carry in August? A lot of it belongs to circumstances that were never in our power to change. We forget sometimes how limited our reach really is once that door closes in June. And naming that is not giving up. It is being honest about where our energy actually belongs, so we can stop spending it on guilt that was never ours to carry in the first place.

Because here is the thing. There are a few things still within our reach. Not all. But a few, and they matter.

Start with curiosity, not books. Before the last week of school, ask the readers in your care what they are actually curious about right now. Not what they want to read. What they are curious about. Dinosaurs, true crime, how engines work, why people get sick. Whatever it is, that curiosity is the thread to pull. Point them somewhere. A book, a magazine, a rabbit hole online. Curiosity is the door — we just help them see it is already open.

Get the actual book into their hand before they leave. Not a list. The physical book, checked out, going home with them. A list is an intention. A book already in their bag is a reality, especially on a Tuesday in July when boredom hits and there is nothing else to reach for. Talk to your librarian now, before the last week. Have books ready. Make the handoff personal because it is.

Write them a note. One sentence, specific to that child. Something that says you saw them this year, that you know something real about who they are as a reader. Kids keep those notes longer than you would expect.

Give them a short survey about people, not books. Ask them who in their life actually reads. Is there a teenager they look up to, a young adult, someone among the adults in their home who might talk books with them over the summer? Most readers have never been asked to think about this. The survey itself is the intervention. Help them name someone before they leave. That name matters more than any list we send home.

Lower the bar out loud, directly to them. Not always “read every day”. But “just keep trying”. Pick something up, put it down, try something else. The goal is a brain that keeps reaching for words all summer, even imperfectly. Tell them explicitly what counts to expand their preconceived notions. Graphic novels, audiobooks paired with the text, nonfiction articles even short ones online, digital reading, news sites written for kids, Wikipedia rabbit holes, chapter books on an ereader. All of it counts. Say it clearly.

And finally, give them a reading dare. Not a class challenge, one dare, one kid. Something specific and slightly ridiculous. A dare that is personal enough that they know you actually thought about them when you wrote it. Readers in our care need permission sometimes to approach reading as something that could actually be fun rather than something they are supposed to do.

We have worked all year to invite the readers in our care into reading, to support their reading lives, to help them see themselves as readers. We cannot control the summer. But we can make sure they leave knowing we believed they were a reader.

That belief is not nothing. Sometimes it is the only thing that carries them through to August. And that is worth holding onto, even when the guilt tries to tell us otherwise.

being a teacher

Quiet, ordinary, enough

Pernille Schmidt Ripp

I’m on my second cup of tea of the day.

Waiting for my husband to come home so I can head out into the world with our youngest, giftcards burning a hole in her pocket.

We woke up in the dark, but knowing that we gained 5 minutes of sunlight already. We lumbered into awakeness through pages read, quiet conversation, and a plan for this second to last day of the year. A plan that will inevitably change, much like it always does.

We continued at the kitchen table, laying out hopes and dreams for the year to come but also reflecting on the year past. We are walking into 2026 with gratitude, dragging our tired bones behind us, but also reveling at the strength that sometimes comes from just surviving the challenges that were embedded in our lives.

2025 will be remembered for some of the darkest days I have had as a parent, searching for answers in how to give a child hope enough to last into the next day. Leaving my home not knowing what I would come home to. Waking throughout the night and wondering whether someone is truly okay or just pretending and whether the tomorrow we wake into becomes a break in our timeline, the before and the after.

But we didn’t.

And so I continue to seek out the ocean as I winterbathe tellling myself that I am okay. That we are okay. And I walk into 2026 with this in my head. I am okay. We are okay. Reveling in the little moments of calm. Of my second cup of tea looking out into my frost covered garden, waiting for the sound of nearly all teenage feet to inevitably stumble into the kitchen demanding my attention.

Our lives are lived in these moments.

In quiet contemplation, in quiet joy that is right there detectable but only if you look. In late night movies, in pages turned, in situps and pushups (nearly anyway), in marveling at the stars although we have seen them so many times, in the taste of a well-cooked meal. In a child waking up for one more day with the fortitude and strength to continue living. In getting dressed and heading to spaces where we get to be part of the quiet joy of other peoples lives. Where for a moment we can help others feel seen, feel understood, and feel like being there, together, actually does matter.

Some of the children we teach are not striving. They are surviving. And on some days, so are we. It is a truth rarely spoken out loud, tucked beneath the language of goals and growth, beneath the expectation that learning must always look like progress. And yet, sometimes the most meaningful thing that happens is simply that someone returns. That they show up. That they choose, once again, to be part of the day.

At its heart, education is not about fixing what is broken. It is about being there. About becoming one of the quiet, steady places in a life that may feel anything but. A pause, a familiar routine, a story that asks nothing in return. About recognizing that survival is not a failure of ambition, but often the bravest work being done.

And so we show up. Not because we have answers, or because presence will solve everything, but because it matters.

Because sometimes what carries us forward is knowing that someone will notice if we arrive, that there is a place where we are expected, where we can sit for a while and simply be. Our lives, and our classrooms, are made of these moments. Quiet, ordinary, enough.

being a teacher

Boost you read aloud with drawing prompts – some ideas

Pernille Schmidt Ripp

I’m a doodler.

Facing long meetings or tasks where I need to intently listen, I instinctively reach for something to draw on—not as a means of escape, but as a way to focus. I know I am not the only one. 

Doodling, when done mindfully, has been shown to boost attention and cognitive processes. It helps in information retention, reduces mind-wandering, and provides a creative outlet that promotes stress reduction.

I think we could all use some of that. And so with the Global read Aloud kicking off on Monday – are you joining? I thought why not share this post again on some ideas for using directed drawing prompts during read alouds.

Now, these are not necessarily for during the reading; after all, we want students to be able to relax into the text, and if you are asked to do something simultaneously often it is the attention to the text itself that gets lost. But, it can be used as a way to dive deep into the story, to showcase critical thinking, and to start conversations about what we noticed and what we know.

To further enhance this practice, consider incorporating a few best practices for mindful and directed drawing:

When we bring drawing into our read-alouds, the goal isn’t just to keep kids busy with pencils and paper. It’s to help them see, feel, and process the story in new ways. Here are some ways to make drawing during read-alouds both intentional and joyful.

Start with an intention. Kids do better when they know why they’re drawing. A simple, kid-friendly goal—“today we’re trying to show what the main character is feeling” or “let’s draw the setting so we can picture it more clearly”—gives focus without shutting down creativity.

Connect drawings to the story. Anchor the drawing to what you’ve just read. Maybe it’s a character’s choice, a key object, or a powerful scene. This helps kids process and remember what matters in the text.

Slow down and notice. Encourage kids to pause and pay attention to the details in the words before they draw. What did the text actually say? What clues help us imagine it? This practice builds careful readers as much as it does careful artists.

Leave room for choice. Prompts are great, but don’t box kids in. Let them interpret the scene or character in their own way. This freedom is where their personality and imagination show up.

Share and talk it out. Build time for kids to show their work and explain their choices. “I drew the sky dark because I think the character felt scared.” These small conversations grow community and deepen understanding.

Use drawings as conversation starters. Ask, “Why did you draw it this way?” or “What made you notice that detail?” Their answers often reveal big insights about how they’re making sense of the story.

End with reflection. A quick question—“What did your drawing help you notice in the story?”—can turn doodles into deeper learning.

When we approach directed drawing in this way, it’s not about pretty pictures. It’s about creating another doorway into the story, one where creativity and intention work together.

I placed them into a slideshow, but here they are as well 

being a teacher, end of year, reflection

Sliding into break by stopping the teacher thought train

Pernille Schmidt Ripp

An oldie but a goodie as many start to slide into summerbreak. Here in Denmark we go all the way until the end of June, with “just” a month off, before we head back in August. Perhaps like me, you need to find a way to stop the teacher thought train?

As an educator in the US, it normally took me weeks to finally relax at the end of the year. In the countdown to goodbye, my body took on more and more thoughts, as it got ready to finally have the time to process the whirlwind of a ride I had just been on.

Those thoughts churn into late evening, meticulously turning over the last school year, analyzing needs, reflecting on mistakes, and, of course, planning for the next year. Is a teacher’s brain ever truly at rest?

So while the calendar may finally say break, my body takes a long time to believe it.

A few years ago, I realized that if I was ever going to get to a point of relaxation faster, I needed to somehow stop this process of thought pile-up my brain otherwise jumped into. And so I started reflecting in a way that felt opposite of how I normally reflected. In a way that focused on reclaiming my identity beyond  teaching, as a way to find a better footing when, inevitably, the rush of the school year would swallow me whole again.

It didn’t always work and I go through many questions, sometimes they work, other times they don’t. Perhaps a silly exercise, but in so many ways these questions allow me to recenter, give myself permission to say “good enough” and also make some promises to myself about how I want to face another year that is bound to be even crazier than the last (at least, if the last couple of years have been an indicator).

So here are a few I have tried that seem to help me unlatch from the mania of teaching. That allow me to find myself again as my kids wait for me to become present once more. Perhaps they can help you as well?


Perhaps you have your own to share?

PS:  I don’t always write the answers down. These can also be used in  discussion or simply thinking about them. If writing feels like more work then I don’t do it.