Category: reflection

reflection, students

What These Kids Don’t Know

Pernille Ripp
He stands to the side of me, waiting his turn, I look up and there he is, “Do you remember me?”  “Of course!”  I say and I mean it because this kid, how could anyone ever forget this kid?  A quick hug and of he goes, he is a middle schooler now after all, and I stand there with a huge smile, happy to have been remembered.  Happy that he took the time to come back to his old teacher, even if just for a moment.  And in that short moment of time there is so much I wish I could say to this kid, and to the others before him; there is so much they don’t know.

What these kids don’t know is how we hope they will remember us with a smile but we never take it for granted.

What these kids don’t know is how we still have all of those notes and letters they wrote to us back then.  And the drawings, yup, we have those too.

What these kids don’t know is how one little hi can make me smile for days.

What these kids don’t know is that we still carry them in our hearts wherever we go.

What these kids don’t know is how I still worry and wonder how life is treating them and if they know how much they are worth.

What these kids don’t know is that they never stop being our kids.

What all my kids don’t know is that I do it for them, every single day, no matter how little sleep I got, no matter what standards are pressing on me.  Every day I come to school to teach for them, every day I cannot wait to get here to be with them.  That’s what these kids don’t know.

end of year, feedback, principals, reflection

Principals; Please Let Your Teachers Evaluate You

Pernille Ripp
I am here today to really ask one thing; principals, please let your teachers evaluate you.  And although it may not be my place and you may find it odd that I dare say it, I will tell you why I ask.

Please let us evaluate you so that we can tell you all of the great things you have done for our school.  So that we can tell you where we have grown as teachers and how you have helped foster that growth.

Please let us evaluate you so that we can tell you our vision for our learning environment and we can figure out how it fits into a whole school vision.

Please let us evaluate you so that we can tell you how the school’s climate is doing from an individual classroom standpoint.  We know you have the overall feel, but let us fill in the gaps.

Please let us evaluate you so that we can help you grow like you help us grow.  We are all human, we all have areas we need to focus on, yet sometimes our own judgment or priorities cloud what is most pressing.  Sometimes teachers or even students are the ones that can keep or put a whole school on track.

Please let us evaluate you so that we know that how we feel matters.  So that we know that much as we should be listening to our students and to you, you will also listen to us.

Don’t make it anonymous; people need to stand behind their words.  But please give us the chance to speak those words to you.

We know time is of the essence, and we all know how much there is still to do, but please let us evaluate you so that we can continue to grow together.

PS:  I let parents and students evaluate me every year, and every year, I grow from it, even if some evaluations are not as positive as I could hope.  We will not grow if we do not ask the people who we effect how we are doing.

Be the change, reflection, students

We Cannot Measure

Pernille Ripp
…This is my most precious moment…and he places a picture of a person who has passed away under the document camera and takes my breath away.  Tears and stammered out questions about the picture.  He asks if he may sit down…and the tears keep coming from me, from him, from everyone.

We cannot measure student trust on a test.

We cannot measure the community that allows a kid to share their most precious moment and then show the emotions that accompany it.

We cannot measure the bravery that comes from knowing how vulnerable that child made themselves.

We cannot measure the tears the other kids got when they saw how much this meant to him.

None of that gets measured on a test.

None of that will ever be a part of my educator effectiveness evaluation.

Not the tears.  Not the moments.  Not the trust or the care we have in each other.  Because no one would ever know how to measure it.  And so they don’t.

And yet, those moments, are the ones that make my classroom a community.  Those moments are the reasons the students thrive, grow, and love school.  Those are the very moments that should count the most.

Yet instead they focus on math, reading, bubbles filled in correctly and then pretend that it gives them a full picture of that child.  Pretends that they know the strengths and weakness of that kid.

We know it doesn’t.

When will the outside world learn?

Be the change, reflection

A Child’s Imagination Lost

Pernille Ripp
it’s poetry month and my student shave been sharing these incredible, thoughtful, and often breathtaking poems.  Today, Buddy, a students of mine who is such a writer, left me this on my desk.

Imagination
The thing that kept me occupied
For hours and hours
Was something so valuable
How come I lost it?

The thing that kept me happy
On the days I felt so down
The thing that I used to treasure
Long, long ago

The thing that kept my days
Worth having fun on
The thing that I relied on
For most of my childhood

Why now as I play games and write stories every day
Why aren’t those times fun?
Probably as I grow older
I will lose my treasure; my imagination

As I stood there with his gift in my hand, I knew I had to ask; what do we do in schools to safeguard a child’s imagination?  What do we do to help them keep it?  Or will they see losing their imagination as byproducts of going to school and growing up? 

reflection, students

Teachers Have Feelings Too

Pernille Ripp
He clears his throat, 41 sets of eyes on him.  “My poem has no title…”

It goes something like this….

Wake up, breakfast, school bus
Torture, torture, torture
Recess
Torture, torture, torture
Lunch
Torture, torture, torture
Bus

Snickers, glances at me, back to him, I make a funny joke out of it, but inside I am reeling.

At the end of the day, I pull him aside and I ask what the purpose was to share that poem?  Do I torture him all day?  Is that what I do?  He says no, he was trying to be funnymaybe but has no real explanation and I get tears in my eyes and tell him, “Teachers have feelings too.  And words have power…”

So I leave school feeling like a failure, feeling like I was made a fool just for fun, wondering if he felt  the need to share it with 2 classes to see what my reaction was?  I don’t think I gave him the reaction he wanted, I am pretty sure he wanted anger, but I don’t get angry when students share how they feel, I only reflect.  And yet, the way in which he shared these feelings, whether accurate or just for laughs, haunts me throughout my weekend.

As teachers we are expected to be bulletproof.  We are expected to stand with our shoulders back, willing to take on any criticism anyone may have.  We are expected to take it in stride.  To grow from the words ladled our way.

Yet teachers have feelings too.

We are supposed to continue fighting when seemingly the whole world wants to beat us down for things that are out of our control.

We are supposed to smile through our tears, laugh through our personal pains, and teach, teach, teach no matter what.

Yet teachers have feelings too.

We are expected to make it engaging, interesting, new, and informative.  We are expected to help students grow, become the people we hope they become, and create lasting bonds all while taking whatever words are thrown at us and ducking them.

We tell students that words have power and yet sometimes we wish they didn’t.  We suppress our feelings whenever a parent gets angry, a child fails to understand a concept, and we take full responsibility even when it is not all ours to take.  But sometimes the weight of all those words cracks us just a little.

We try every day to make school a place that children want to come even though some politicians are trying to turn it into a place where students are numbers and we are too.  When we are told how we fail as teachers we are supposed to agree, learn from it, and return to class as if nothing has happened.  But we are human, we take pride in what we do, we invest not just our time but our essence, and so when someone tells me that what I do is torture, it leaves me with the wind knocked out of me, unsure of what to do next.

I am teacher and I have feelings too, even if I try to hide them behind jokes, squared shoulders, mand determined strides.  So do I teach my students that?

reflection

Can Schools Really Stop Bullying?

Pernille Ripp
When I was ten I moved schools because of bullying.  And not your typical every day “You’ll get over it” kind of bullying either, but a viscious concentrated effort to isolate me from my peers and get me into as much trouble as possible.  I was left in a closet.  My best friend was banned from speaking to me at school and children refused to be my partner.  I was the victim nearly every day, often going home in tears, faking illnesses to not have to go to school and begging my mom to please move me.  My bully was not another 5th grader, not the cruelty of a child’s mind, but instead the product of an adult; my bully was my classroom teacher.  A woman that I trusted and l
loved like only a child can adore their teacher, someone who was supposed to protect and guide me as I grew as a learner.  Instead she made it her mission to make me feel like the freak (her words) and bad influence (again her words) that she saw me as.

My mom did the right thing, she contacted the principal.  She held me when I cried.  She spoke to other parents.  She fought for me, but in the end with the Danish school system being so that you have the same classroom teacher from 1st through 9th she knew that this was a losing battle.  So in the middle of 5th grade, I hugged my teacher (yes, really) and said goodbye to all my friends to start a school in a different city.

I speak of my bullying experience as I find myself wondering whether schools can truly prevent and protect children from bullying.  While my case was an extreme one, usually teachers do not bully their own students, it still followed a pattern of hidden targeting and isolation   My teacher was very good at making it look like she didn’t hate me and so when we spoke to the principal he mostly thought we were making it up.  She messed up though when she started contacting other parents telling them to keep their children away from me outside of school.  She messed up when she kept all of the girls in the classroom behind to have them share how much of a bad influence and terrible friend I was.

But most of our students, when they bully, are very good at keeping it secret.  Perpetrators are often those students that know how to manipulate teachers into believing that they would never do such a thing.  Ask any parent and they will tell you that they know that their kid is probably different at school than they are at home.  I know Thea has done stuff at daycare typical of a 4-year-old that I still have a hard time believing she would do.  So we don’t often see the bullying happen and rely on testimony that turns into he said/she said discussions.  We wring our hands, trying to see through the chatter and try to figure out what really happened.  We document, of course, and pass on to the powers that be.  We contact parents and keep a paper trail trying to find patterns, but for what?  Often, if the bullying is bad enough students don’t report it.  Perhaps they fear further retaliation or escalation.  Perhaps they assume that we as a school cannot do much.  Perhaps they don’t think they will be believed.  And so it continues and we can truly do nothing for the unreported.

Yet, if we look at what we can do as a school it is depressingly little; we can scold, we can discuss, we can take away recess.  We can take away privileges, we can threaten and guilt, we can suspend.  We can try to mend relationships and we can try to educate.  But is all of that enough?  Can we truly as a school protect kids from bullies?  Or can we only hope that all of the effort we put into preventing it is enough?