Category: Student-centered

blogging, reform symposium, Student-centered

Ask the Children – My Presentation for Reform Symposium 2011

Pernille Ripp
I am thrilled to be invited back to present at the upcoming Reform Symposium – a free virtual conference for all people interested in education.  My first presentation on Friday July 29th 5:30 PM CST will be with the wonderful Matt Ray discussing our New York – Wisconsin connection between our classrooms and hopefully inspiring others to reach out and create connections.  The second time I present is all by myself on Saturday July 30th 7 PM CST where I share how to set up meaningful student blogging with students.  Please join me for this wonderful opportunity to learn!


Written By Shelly Terrell


In a few days, nearly 8000 educators from over 40 different countries are expected to attend a free 3 day virtual conference, The Reform Symposium, #RSCON3. This free award-nominated e-conference is going to take place on July 29-31st, 2011. Participants can attend this online conference from the comfort of their homes or anywhere that has Internet access. This amazing conference provides educators new or currently active on social networks the opportunity to connect with educators and professionals in the field of education worldwide. With over 12 Keynotes, 80 presenters, and 3 keynote panel discussions you are bound to be inspired!

– View the schedule to plan which presentations you will attend!
– Download the flyer to share with your school!
– Watch this Youtube video of January 2011’s conference!
– See if your school will count this as continuing education credit!
– Consider hosting a viewing party!

We would like to thank the incredible organizers– Shelly Terrell, Kelly Tenkely, Chris Rogers, Lisa Dabbs, Melissa Tran, Clive Elsmore, Mark Barnes, Ian Chia, Cecilia Lemos, Jerry Blumengarten, and Kyle Pace- and Steve Hargadon of Classroom 2.0 and The Future of Education online communities for making this incredible conference possible.

We hope you can join us for this incredible professional development experience!



education reform, Student-centered

Ask the Children

Pernille Ripp

There are many experts in education.  Government that seems to know best, education secretaries that certainly have the solution, districts that mandate, standards to be followed, and teachers that always know best.  Yet in many conversations surrounding education we seem to leave someone important out; the students.  No one seems to be bothered to ask what they think of the state of the American educational system.  No one seems to care how they feel about Race to the Top, college tuition, or even day-to-day curriculum.  No one seems to care because we do education to them.  

Students are not seen as the experts that they truly are.  Students are not included in the debates, in the decision making and yet all of our decisions impact them the greatest.   This year, I ran my classroom with one word in mind: ours!  This classroom does not belong to me, I am not there to “do” anything, I am there to educate along with my students.  And believe me, they want to be heard.  When I provided them with the opportunity to speak either through conversation or blogging, it was like a floodgate had been opened.  These 4th graders already knew how they learned best, they knew how to be the best students they could possible be, except no one had ever asked them.

We claim to be experts yet forget to ask those we are experts on.  How can this failed social experiment continue to function?  How can we do education to all of these children without ever asking them how they feel about it.  Ask the children!  Hear their voice and then change!  It changed my life when I let my students speak, don’t continue to support the silence.

community, new year, Student-centered

Community Building 101 With Mrs. Ripp

Pernille Ripp
Ahhh community building exercises.  Those small sheets of paper that we all so vigorously collect whilst in college knowing that some day they will be our go-to’s.  Some day they will lead us to a breakthrough in our classrooom.  Some day they will be corner stones of our community.  And yet, then they don’t.  In fact, as I cleaned out my files at the end of the year, I found a lot of them shoved into a forgotten corner of my cabinet, crumpled, dusty, and very unused.  I guess I haven’t needed them after all.

So welcome to community building 101 with your teacher, Mrs. Ripp.  A newish teacher that doesn’t quite know what she is doing at all times but will happily share all of the ups and downs.  So first, how not to build community, from someone who has made all of these mistakes:

  • Pre-post your rules.  Nothing says “This is my classroom” like a beautifully laminated poster of all of your rules that have been hanging there for years.  Students certainly know who is the boss then and also that they are indeed just visitors in your room.  Way to set the tone from the first day.
  • Spend days on a constitution.  I like the Constitution, in fact, as a social studies lesson I think this would be marvelous.  But as a community builder, not so much.  Think of it through a kid’s eyes:  days spent discussing the rules for the rest of they year and then pledging to uphold all 20 of them, umm not so much.  Oh and who is going to remember all of them, yikes!
  • Set clear boundaries.  The first year I labeled my classroom with teacher versus student stickers.  Oh yes, I was a label master, making sure the students knew exactly which cabinets, which supplies, and which areas they were allowed in.  I spent the rest of the year reminding them where not to go and I kept hammering in how something was “mine” – sounds like a 2 year old’s behavior, not a teacher’s.
  • Ice breakers.  I know people will disagree here, but I hate ice breakers, they are super awkward and make me feel very uncomfortable for a while until I can retreat back to my own comfort zone.  I have never made a connection through an icebreaker, sorry.  Instead, invest in something meaningful as a classroom like a connection map, or a kid made video tour of the classroom, or something that the kids can work together on.  If they can focus on the task rather than the connecting, community building will start to happen.
  • Tell the kids you will now be building a community.  I am all for setting goals and telling the kids about it, but this one better be left unsaid.  It’s like telling someone you are trying to become their friend; that hyperfocus tends to make things weird.  Instead tell the kids what they will be doing, simple as that.
  • Have a million things planned.  Sometimes the best beginnings of a community comes from spending time together, but when you plan too much or have too much to do, that goes out the window.  So leave a little room for spontaneity, a little room for just hanging out (perhaps on the playground) and a little room for whatever the kids would like to do. 

    So what should you do?

    • Be yourself.  The kids will see right through any phoniness, so if you are a massive dork like I am, let it all shine through.  
    • Share your life.  I often have a video from Thea, my 2 year old daughter, or a funny story about her to start the day out with.  The kids really get to know me and my family and in turn open up about their lives as well.
    • Laugh a lot.  I love to laugh and I think kids are hilarious, if we just give them the time to speak.  
    • Start decorating the classroom.  I stress over and over that this is “Our classroom,” so the kids get to make decorating choices as well as furniture setup decisions.  Every class learns differently and they can often set up a better environment than I can.
    • Start learning.  I love all of the learning that happens at school so we start right away with some curriculum, often the kids cannot wait to see what this new grade level will be about so why wait.  Of course, we balance it out with all the other great non-curricular activities.
    • Decide on expectations together.  I don’t have classroom rules, I have expectations that are set with the students.  We take some time, and we always adjust them throughout the year, but in the end they need to be straight and to the point so the kids (and I) can remember them.  And no, they are not posted anywhere.
    • Give it time.   Great community does not happen on the first day of school but you do plant the seed that day.  So tend to it and nurture it, give it them time it deserves throughout the school year and highlight it from time to time.  I discuss with the students how great of a classroom we have which keeps it a priority and reminds of what we strive to be: a place where everyone feels like they belong and are safe.
    being a teacher, choices, Student-centered, trust

    5 + 1 Things I Learned This Year

    Pernille Ripp
    I was recently asked what would be my top 5 things I have learned this past year in my journey to radically change my classroom.  So after some deep pondering and gut checks, here are the lessons I have learned, or the top 5 + 1.

    1. Give them choice (and a voice).  The number one thing my students said they loved was the fact that they had a choice and a voice.  As teachers we are taught that we are the only experts but this is so far from the truth.  My students have a lot of background knowledge and a lot of enthusiasm so letting them choose the type of project they wanted to create or how they wanted to learn something meant there was buy in.   No longer was learning mandated, there was actual buy-in from everyone.
    2. Trust your students.  I was not sure that my students could handle all of the responsibility I was giving them but throughout the year I was proven wrong again and again.  In fact, my students could probably have handled even more.  Trust also means that if they tell you something not so nice, you should celebrate it, not get upset.  The fact that my students trusted me enough to tell me something was boring is something that I relish and then learned from.  
    3. Trust yourself.  I knew I had to make big changes in my room and yet I questioned myself throughout the year.  was not giving them a letter grade really benefitting them?  Was not having punishment in my classroom better for all of us?  Were we accomplishing as much as we should have?  My gut told me I was doing the right thing and yet doubt snuck in sometimes, in the end, do what you believe in and then stand behind it.  There is a reason your common sense is telling you something is amiss and needs to be fixed, so fix it to suit you.
    4. Ask yourself the tough questions.  I asked myself whether I would be a student in my own classroom.  Before this year, the answer would have been a resounding no.  Now that answer has changed.  In fact, I love being in my classroom as much as my students do.  School should be about learning, yes, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be engaging and enticing at the same time.
    5. Give yourself a break.  There were days were I sucked as a teacher.   Days were I pined for inane punishment just to make them behave or were I raised my voice.  There were days were I didn’t feel like giving feedback or having lengthy conversations about projects.  Some days I just wanted to lecture and be done with it.  Thankfully my students snapped me out of that really quickly.  You are not perfect, you never will be, and that is ok.  Trust the direction you are taking and make adjustments as you see fit.  
    6. Be Quiet!  Teaching should not be about teachers pouring information into the heads of students, but rather teachers as a guide letting students explore, create, and make connections.  When we let the students own the classroom and the discussion they also take ownership of the learning, and that is a beautiful thing indeed.  So get off the stage but set it up for them to learn and then stop talking.  Much like we ask our parents to not help with homework, we should also ask ourselves to not take away the pleasure of learning.  

    So there they are; my biggest lessons this year.  I am already excitedly planning for my transition to 5th grade next year and reevaluating what worked, what sucked, and what will I definitely do differently.  A new year brings new challenges and for that I am thankful.

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    being a teacher, goodbye, journey, Student-centered

    They Are Ready to Leave

    Pernille Ripp

    I started this year with a vision and ended it with a new belief. I started this year by throwing it almost all out, scrappng what I thought were “have to’s” in the classroom, discarding rhetoric survived from college, raising my own expectation for eagerness, excitement, genuine learning rather than memorization. I started this year with many ideas. Not my students. They started this year being excited about being 4th graders, bummed about losing their third recess, but pumped that the chairs and desks were bigger. Some were even interested in what we would learn in 4th grade, but none of them knew what to expect. Neither did I to tell you the truth.

    So these kids that have been my partners in learning, these kids that have believed in our journey together are now ready to leave me. They are ready for new challenges, new jokes, new routines and expectations. They are ready to decompress, breathe a little bit, and just be kids in the summer heat. I pretend to be ready to let them go, I know it is their time, but it is still hard to lose the label of “my kids.” The journey we have been on has been so incredible, so beyond expectations, that I wonder if this is it? Is this the year I will always try to emulate? Or did I really stumble upon something within myself? Did I create a new teacher where then old me once stood? Will my vision survive the next year?

    I started this year with a vision and I was lucky enough to have kids that believed in it too. Now they get to leave with our vision of what learning should feel like, and I am left behind, alone, but so, so proud. These kids – they will change the world some day.