Category: being a teacher

being a teacher, writing

But We Get So Excited….

Pernille Ripp
We are in the middle of writing boot camp, that back to basics training that my 5th graders all need.  They have these incredible ideas just bursting onto their blogs, their journals and anywhere else they write, but they lack the basics.  The organization, capitalization, and other things that make readers stumble and lose interest.

So as we go through another lesson on paragraphs and the students correctly put all of the pieces together, I ask them, “Do you all know this?”  A resounding “Yes!” greets me.  “Well, then why don’t you use it in your writing?”  Silence and then this answer, “Well, we just forget because we get so excited…”  I smile and move on.

I wonder how many times students don’t show their best work because they are so excited…

assessment, being a teacher, change, Student-centered

Why Giving Second Chances Should be Second Nature

Pernille Ripp
We have all had the phone call, “Tommy studied so hard but didn’t do very well on the test, is there anything we can do?”  How many of us have said, “No, sorry…”  I know I used to.  I used to be the queen of no extra credit, no re-takes, no second chances.  That is until then I realized how this didn’t reflect adult life.  In my job I get second chances all of the time.  If a lesson doesn’t go as planned, I re-do it or teach it again.  I don’t get observed only once to have my teaching career decided but instead multiple times by various people. If we have a bad day, we go back, fix it, and then move forward.  Every single day I get to learn from my mistakes. So why is it we are so hellbent on not giving our students the same second chance?  Yes, I know that standardized tests have inane rules we have to follow, but nothing else does.  We decide the rules and for some reason a lot of the time those rules do  not involve allowing students to learn from their mistakes mistakes.

Last year, my students got to fix everything they handed in.  Stupid mistakes became teaching moments, sloppy work was enhanced, and gaps of knowledge were filled in.  It was certainly more work for me, but what it taught the kids was invaluable; perseverance, dedication, and not being afraid to try something.  More learning occurred in my room last year than ever before.  And this year is no different, my students give me their best and then we figure out how to learn even more.  By giving them second chances, they are proving to me how much they really know, outside of the anxiety, the pressure, and the rigidity that can occur. So why not try it?  Give your students back that test and tell them to fix it, give them back their work and tell them to enhance it.  Give them another chance to learn.

Be the change, being a teacher, believe, failure, Student-centered

Please Don’t Mark It Wrong – How Our Society Raise Children Afraid to Fail

Pernille Ripp
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.

being a teacher, students

Ability Grouping Versus Tracking – What’s in a Name?

Pernille Ripp
For a while now I have been wondering about the language we use as we group our students.  Not so much the labels we use but the method of grouping used.  For guided reading, you are supposed to group students at their reading level, which then in turn creates ability groups.  This is considered a great thing for teaching students at their targeted levels.  And I tend to agree, I do some whole class book discussions but for deeper teaching of reading strategies I like to meet with smaller groups to discuss pertinent strategies with books they can understand.  And that according the guided reading is what I should be doing; placing students with similar leveled students or similar skilled students so that they can work at the same task.

For math you can do flex grouping, also based somewhat on ability as determined through pre-tests and personalties, and this too is totally permissible.  It allows for smaller groups and different pacing of curriculum, as well as remediation and enrichment.

Yet, if you take away the gentler names and introduce the word “tracking”, then both of these scenarios lose their luster.  So I wonder, out loud as usual, is ability grouping really just tracking with a kinder name?

If we ability group in elementary are we setting students on their path for the rest of their academic career or are we indeed teaching them within their zone of proximal development and then spurring further growth?  Are we able to group students in such a way that all are challenged at their level without breaking them apart?  Can we effectively meet every single child’s needs within in a classroom setting during our instruction time without identifying which skill they specifically need to work on and them grouping them to work on them?

I would love your thoughts on this.

being a teacher, classroom setup, Student-centered

Theirs

Pernille Ripp
As I look around the classroom I see the piles, the papers, the snack wrappers.  I see the posters in progress, some ideas scribbled out, doodles and even a wayward shoe.   Computers that have been left on, carpet squares haphazardly stacked, and pencils on the floor.  When I started teaching this would have stressed me out.  I would have spent a half an hour or more straightening, re-hanging those posters and throwing out whatever I saw fit.  I would have wiped, sanitized, and organized.  Perhaps I would even have labeled and checked my supplies that nothing was missing.  I would have made a note to myself to talk to the kids about how they needed to clean more, how we need a clean and organized classroom to function well.  How their stuff shouldn’t be messed in with my stuff.

Now I organize myself, leave their piles, smile as I shut off the lights and think, “This is their room now.”

being a teacher, discipline, punishment, rewards

Why I Oughta….

Pernille Ripp
“If you don’t hand this in tomorrow, I am taking away two recceses…”
“If you don’t quiet down and focus, I will give you extra homework…”
“If you don’t start doing your work, you will not go on the field trip….”

These statements all came from me my first 2 years of teaching.  Always threatening to reach compliance, always promising the kids doom and gloom if they didn’t do exactly as I said.  I thought I had control.  I was wrong, what I had instead, was compliance.  I didn’t have buy in or engagement.  I didn’t have kids that were excited about the learning, I didn’t have kids that couldn’t wait to come to school. 

So what changed?  I did.  I realized that the classroom I wanted to be a part of couldn’t be one of threats. It couldn’t be one where students felt they had to do something because the teacher said it and not because they found it interesting or worthwhile.  I couldn’t have a classroom where the kids just went through the motions, worked within the system and just survived school.  I didn’t want them to just survive, I wanted them to thrive. So I decided no more” if you don’t do this then this bad thing will happen.”  No more “Why I oughta’s” out of me.  No more fooling myself into believing that the kids automatically should respect me, I had to earn it from them.

So that next year I had the kids set the rules, they already knew them after all.  We didn’t write them down or post them on our walls.  We discussed and moved on.  We changed the rules when we needed to.  When a child didn’t finish their homework, which there was very little of anyway, they had to tell me in the morning and take responsibility.  If they told me they had left it at home, I believed it.  The kids would choose how to get their work done, they could stay in for recess if they needed help otherwise they knew it was expected the next day.  I was honest with the kids, I sometimes forgot to do stuff as well or life got in the way.  My kids didn’t become less compliant by me removing the threats, they started to work harder because the work was worth their time.  They knew that if I asked them to do something it was because I had deemed the work worthy of their time. 

It wasn’t perfect, but guess what; nothing ever is.  But is is me and it is us and it works.  Those kids, I respect them and I have earned their respect.  I have set a healthy example for them that hopefully they can use outside of school.  Don’t just demand but build a relationship, how them that you respect them as learners and as human beings.  Show them they are worth it.