I have always been a reader but I was never a proud reader in my classroom until a year ago. I realized then that to inspire deep passion in my readers I had to share my own. I realized then that to inspire my students to keep reaching for books I had to show my own hunger for more. Now I am reader because I know it matters. I am reader because it teaches me more.
I am a reader because I can hand books to students knowing that they will love them.
I am a reader because I need to get lost in books as much as my students do.
I am a reader because I want to live a thousand lives and travel to a million places.
I am a reader because my life would be gray without all of my books.
I am a reader because I cannot pretend that reading is important, I have to live it.
I am a reader because it allows me to connect with any child I meet.
I am a reader because of the memories it creates.
I am a reader because of the moments I share with others.
In one week I return to my amazing classroom full-time. Done with a messed up maternity leave and eager to be back, yet sad to leave our little baby at home. Being at home has let me not only snuggle 4 kids any time I want, but it has also allowed me to reflect on small changes I want to incorporate into my own routine when I get back to my other kids. Perhaps you will find some ideas to shake things up a bit as well.
Be a PD ninja. So often we think of PD as a whole day affair but PD can also come in the form of a really great 5 minutes. So why not print out an article and slap it on the bathroom door? Why not forward a link to the whole staff? Why not start a PD related discussion at lunch? I love the little moments of learning that can be found in a day.
Ask your students. I swear this should be on my non-existent business card. My students have had an incredible sub while I was gone so the first thing I plan on doing is asking them what they loved about her way of teaching. I love stealing ideas that have worked in my room already, we should always embrace our chance to grow from others.
Incorporate a talk break. My students really struggle with transitions, they even blogged about it. Yet instead of beating them up about it, I plan on incorporating a mini-talk break before we transition. Students get a chance to switch their brains and also just get it out. A few minutes invested in talking will hopefully pay off the whole day,
Seek mindfulness.This article on mindfulness really made me think of how much it is needed in my room. While I have yet to figure out where it will fit, I am going to make it fit somewhere. I think we all need a moment to just be content and quiet as we tackle our learning.
Encourage unsupported reflection. I get to do conferences the week I am back and as always they are student-led. However, this time rather than having students fill out a questionnaire, I created a reflection sheet for them. I really want to see where they are not just as thinkers, but also how they will express themselves. How deep will they go in their conference when it isn’t just a fill in the blank sheet?
Make more connections. We got really busy before winter break and then I went into the hospital and everything got a bit chaotic. Making global connections was not our first priority. So the first week I am back we have 2 mystery skypes and a literacy share in honor of World Read Aloud Day. I have also reached out to a 5th grade in Australia to start a collaboration with them.
Start a continents project. Geography seems to be the loser in our curriculum with very little time to figure out where we are in the world. We will therefore be researching the continents and learning about the world during our resource block, hello Twitter connections!, what we will be doing I have not decided, after all, I need to ask my students.
Give back. I was inspired by this article on a 6 year old getting books for homeless children in NYC to think about what my own students could accomplish. We will therefore be starting a service learning project as well, once again proving that even children can change the world.
My students used to read so they could do a book report. They used to read so they could have a book talk with an adult. They used to read so they could check off 1,000 pages. Some read for the love of it, some for the occasional thrill, and some read because I told them to. Much like many children today. This year as we started to have deep discussion about the books we chose to read, I realized quickly that my students were unsure how to discuss a book, how to dig deeper and pull out answers from each other. They even were unsure of why we were learning how to do this in the first place. Surely reading doesn’t have much to do with conversations?
So when I asked them why we discuss our books, the most common answer was because we want to share them. Because it gives us something to do at the end of reading. Because it proves to you that we read. Quietly I looked at them and then told them, “We don’t talk about books to just share them. We don’t practice these reading conversations so that we have proof that we have read that day. We don’t even do it to become better readers. Reading and talking about reading is bigger than that.
We share our books because they show a part of us that others may not know.
We share our thoughts because it may give someone else the courage to share theirs.
We ask questions about books because we must learn to ask questions of others. We must learn to adapt to any conversation thrust upon as adults. To engage and be engaging whenever needed. Sure, we practice our conversations through our love of books, but it is much bigger than that. We practice these conversations so that we can be better people who are interested in those they meet. Who can speak to strangers when needed. Who can think quickly and respond well.
We may speak of books now, but you don’t know what life will need you to speak of later. ” A child that reads becomes an adult who thinks” and you, my students, are thinkers indeed. So don’t think we do it just to wrap up reading, to have a nice little chat. We do it because it is a life skill. We do it for our love of reading, for our love of conversation, and for our love of people. That’s why we have reading discussions; to connect with others and become better human beings.”
I became a teacher because I thought I could change the world. Now I know what a foolish endeavor I have set out upon. It is not so much that I cannot change the world, my teaching career is not over yet so I will not throw in the towel. It is more that I don’t care so much about changing the world anymore, but rather that I care about helping children change the world. My time is now, but theirs is coming up and as a teacher I have the privilege of being able to provide students with opportunities to make a difference, to make a change, to make their mark.
So what can you do to empower your students? I have been writing my second book on this topic for Corwin (hopeful publication this fall!) and keep coming back to the same simple principles.
Give them a voice – but also help them understand what it means to have a voice. Many of my students assume that having a voice just means speaking up, but to me it is much broader than that. Having a voice means having a say, deciding in what happens within the classroom or the school. Changing the way school is provided and having a way to speak to the world.
Breed honesty. Too often our students are too nice to say how they really feel about what we are doing to them, so leading by example in your own honest reflections, and starting discussions where students can safely share their true opinions, knowing that they will not haunt them in the future through a vindictive teacher. Yes, honesty can hurt our pride as teachers, even mine, but I would rather know what I am doing wrong than having students pretend everything is okay.
Find your place. It is too simplistic to say that our place as teachers should be on the side, it is also too simplistic to say that it should be as the leader. Instead as a teacher, our jobs and our place changes every day and sometimes every minute. While one child may need you to hold their hand, another needs you to push them forward. One child may need for you to get out of their way, while another is lost. I thought I would fail as a teacher if I led my students, now I know I only fail if I don’t give them what they need.
Make room for failure and success. Too often we simplify failure and how we must embrace it because that is the only true way to learn. Yet, success is also needed. Sure students need perseverance, we all do, but we also need success to fuel our perseverance. If I set up a classroom where students continually failed all in the name of creative pursuit, I would have a classroom full of students unsure that they would ever be able to succeed. Chance of failure – absolutely – but chance of success as well!
While empowering students is more than this, this are the foundation that I build my classroom upon. These are the tenets that must be in place for my students to continue developing into the incredibly passionate, confident, self-reliant problem-solvers they can be. Then they can change the world, and not just when they grow up, but starting today as 5th graders, not waiting for tomorrow.
I was a girl who loved to climb trees. A girl who wore pants every day. A girl who played with Barbies and GI Joe’s. My best friend was a boy for many years and I didn’t care about pink, glitter, or rainbows. I don’t know if I was a tomboy – don’t you have to be good at sports for that designation? – but I was not a girly girl by any means. I was just me.
Thea, my 5 year-old-daughter is a glitter queen. Her life cannot contain enough pink or rainbows. Life is better if she is wearing a tutu skirt, her hair done, and preferably a snazzy shoe. This is the kid that refused to wear jeans for 2 years because “Girls don’t wear jeans, mom!” We didn’t make her this way, she just is her.
Thea has been fully living the girly girl stereotype since she started talking. Throwing fits when she didn’t like her clothes, telling me how she wanted her hair done. Playing princess, rockstar, and fairy. Wishing for a pink bedroom when she had the choice and picking out a Barbie backpack for 4K. There was one Halloween when she picked a Buzz Lightyear costume, but otherwise it has been anything cute and maybe even pink. And I feel so guilty. After all, according to experts I am enabling her to think that this is how girls should act, that they should be cute, that they should be giggly, that they should love pink above all else. That they can’t be tough or fighters in life. I should be introducing gender neutral toys, clothing in all colors, and emphasizing her toughness and her smarts, not her cuteness. And I have and she laughs and refuses to play with the toys, refuses to wear the clothes, and tells me she looks cute.
Yet, I am not worried. Thea may be the living embodiment of gender stereotyping in girls, but she is also tough, she also loves to run and play Ninja Turtles, she wants to be a Power Ranger when she grows up (the pink one of course), and she doesn’t see her girlyness as limiting herself in any way. In her eyes she can be a “karate girl” while wearing a pink tutu. In her eyes she can conquer the world wearing sparkly shoes. I may be worried about the stereotype she embodies, but Thea? She doesn’t have a care in the world about it, she is just being her, and she is happy with that. So I should be too. Perhaps wearing a rainbow hat is not a way of showing you are the weaker sex but rather that the world needs more color. Perhaps insisting on a tutu skirt is not saying you want to be a princess but rather that life is an occasion to celebrate. Perhaps we shouldn’t read as much into what our children do and instead just embrace who they are. I know I will.
I am a passionate (female) 5th grade teacher in Wisconsin, USA, proud techy geek, and mass consumer of incredible books. Creator of the Global Read Aloud Project, Co-founder of EdCamp MadWI, and believer in all children. I have no awards or accolades except for the lightbulbs that go off in my students’ heads every day. First book “Passionate Learners – Giving Our Classroom Back to Our Students” will be released this March from Powerful Learning Press. Follow me on Twitter @PernilleRipp.
Thea learns when she wants to. She creates her own homework when she wants to. And she gets it done when she wants to. She has almost been like this since she was born. Master of her own path and of her own time, So putting her in school, 4K, to be exact, has been interesting to say the least. She works hard in school, playing mostly, learning happens too (she has an amazing teacher) but she is carving her path at her own speed. Her personality staying true no matter what we try to do at home, no matter what she should be learning at a certain point in time. She doesn’t care about time lines of learning, she is on her own journey.
I wonder about my own students and those whose habits I try to change, am I on a wild goose chase? Are their habits already past changing or does that change have to come from within them with slight goading from me? How many times have I told a quiet child that they should speak up more, or a rowdy child that they should calm down? What about the child whose file shares a pattern of work not getting done, office referrals for miles, and grades to go with it? Can I truly change how they are as a person or only show them a better way and hope that they agree? Can I expect them to line up their achievements with what my curriculum map says thet should accomplish?
We talk about achievement in education as if we can just teach students something and expect them to be ready to learn it because of their age. Yet we seem to forget that we are working with human beings that don’t just change when someone tells them to, even if they are just a child being told what to do. We forget that even children have a sense of self and stay true to that unless the benefit to change is so great that they cannot resist. No matter how much I cajole Thea to learn her letters if she doesn’t want to, she won’t. No matter how much I sweet talk or tell her of the life consequences that will face her if she doesn’t. She will learn in her own time, as she always does, staying true to her personality along the way. Curious, creative, but all in her own time. Did I forget that my students are probably just like her?
Pernille Ripp 