Student-centered – Page 5

Be the change, being me, building community, new year, Student-centered

May I Speak to You Privately?

August 4, 2014 Pernille Ripp

“Hey Pernille, can I speak to you in my office?” My new principal asked me today. Immediately my heart dropped; what had I done? Had I screwed up already? Were they regretting their decision to hire me?

I followed her in, sat down, took a deep breath and waited for the inevitable. I must have screwed up somehow, why else would she want to speak to me privately? And then she surprised me. It wasn’t to yell or reprimand, nor was it to point out my rookie mistakes. It was to connect, to ask questions, to ask how she could help. To further welcome me and discuss the year ahead. I stayed for almost 30 minutes, inwardly amazed at the moment. So thankful that this is the kind of person I get to work for and with. That this is the community I get to represent.

As I left I couldn’t help but cringe at my initial reaction. My assumptions had gotten the better of me. Yet, I realized that those assumptions are based upon my experience, that asking to speak privately with someone has a negative connotation. That being asked to step into an office is usually not positive.

So think of how our students feel when we do the same to them? When we ask them to stay back for a moment? To come in during recess? To hang on? Wait up? Don’t go? Do they assume we have something positive to share or something negative? I can tell you right now, that I have missed so many opportunities to use this moment for praise. I have reserved the private moment for corrections, reprimands, careful questions of concern. I have almost never used it for good. Have you?

This year that will change. I want to reclaim the power of the private moment and change the assumption. I want students to not automatically assume that staying behind means something bad. That waiting for a moment does not signify trouble. Sure, there will be times where a private moment is needed to discuss decisions or actions, but there should be more of celebration. There should be more positive surprises.

So just as I tell students what I notice on post-it notes, I will look for the moment to praise privately. I will look for that small sliver of time where I get to speak one to one to someone and tell them what I see, how proud I am, how I am here to help. I hope they leave feeling relieved like I did and then proud. I hope they will see that I care.

I am a passionate teacher in Wisconsin, USA, who has taught 4, 5th, and 7th grade. 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 Classrooms Back to Our Students” can be purchased now from Powerful Learning Press. Second book“Empowered Schools, Empowered Students – Creating Connected and Invested Learners” can be pre-ordered from Corwin Press now. Follow me on Twitter @PernilleRipp.

Be the change, being me, classroom setup, new year, Student-centered

Your Classroom Does Not Have to Be Pinterest Worthy to Be Effective

August 3, 2014August 3, 2014 Pernille Ripp

The night before I met my first group of students, I was at school in a panic. Not because I was about to actually be a teacher. Not because I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. All true, however, my panic was from the feeling that my classroom didn’t look cute. It didn’t look lived in. It didn’t look inviting. So at 9 PM, the night before school started, I was in the hallway ripping down my welcome bulletin board, furiously folding party hats to create a new 3-d one that would live up to what I thought everybody was expecting. By 11 PM I went home, exhausted (did I mention I was pregnant with my first child) and still feeling completely inadequate. My room would never live up to all the other cute rooms I saw around my school. And I felt like I was doomed to fail as a teacher from the beginning.

It turns out my experience was not unique, nor dated. 7 years later, I get contacted a lot asking what to do with these feelings of inadequacy. What to do when we feel our room does not live up to what the supposed expectation of elementary classrooms is. But it is not the pressure from seeing our colleagues rooms anymore that drives us into panic. It is Pinterest, the internet, blogs that shows decorated classrooms that I will never be able to replicate. And so these new teachers ask for validation, ask whether their rooms are enough. They fear posting pictures of their room because they don’t feel they are ready. They wonder if they can be effective teachers without a “pretty” room. Our fear of inadequacy spurred on by an internet movement of cute.

I advocate for giving the room back to students. This does not work well with having a completed room on the first day of school. My walls are not very decorated. There are no chevron stripes (I do love chevron though), no fancy displays, no motivational posters. The walls are bare, the chairs and tables in pods, the room is functional but probably not super inviting. I do the inviting on the first day by placing myself in the hallway, big smile on my face, and then I ask students to become a part of the room. To move the tables. To create displays. To set the rules, to tell me what works and what doesn’t. And so then it becomes our room, but I cannot achieve that before the first day of school.

Why is this so important to me? Because for too long we have invited students into our rooms. We have let them visit. And yes, I know that our rooms are our home away from home. That we need to feel comfortable in them as well. That our personality should show through. But I feel like it sometimes goes too far, That we overdecorate, we overdo, and it leaves no rooms for students to be a part of it. They continue on as visitors in our beautiful rooms and their engagement shows it.

Now, this is not to say that having a nice looking room is a bad thing. I think there is a balance between decorating your classroom and focusing too much on it. I see some pictures and I cringe because although they look beautiful, there is no room to make a mess. There is no room to be creative because all decisions have already been made. And as the mother of a boy, I wonder how welcome he would feel in a room full of polka dots and pinks?

So I am here to say to all you new teachers, or old ones like me that need to hear it too; your classroom does not have to be Pinterest worthy to be effective. It does not have to have everything figured out, everything in its permanent place. It does not have to have all of those things we see in other classrooms, because we are not other people. We do not have the same stuff they do, we do not have the same personalities. Make your classroom work for you, allow yourself to not get hung up on how cute it is, how inviting it is. Focus on creating a community that invites all children to be stakeholders. Don’t feel you need to spend so much money decorating, find a balance, allow yourself to stop. If we really want to build a community with our students, nothing says “I trust you” in the beginning than giving the room back to them. And you can’t do that if every decorating decision has already been made. You cannot say “this is your room too” if you are clearly in charge of everything.

Be the change, being a teacher, new year, reflection, Student-centered, students

Just Fine is Not Enough

July 30, 2014 Pernille Ripp

Today, my baby twins turn two.Hard to think they were ever small enough to fit in my body when they stand in front of me demanding another waffle, another kiss, another story. And yet, two years is a long time, a lot has changed. Not only have they changed, but we have changed. The world has changed in ways we could never imagine. Sometimes on purpose, other times out of necessity. Change, as they say, is a constant.

I think of how we change in the classroom and how we often change based on what we need. We are after all the ones who wield most of the power. We are the ones who plan the lessons. Who chart the course. Who have to act in charge, even if we don’t feel it. We change when things don’t work for us, when things don’t fit into our framework of what our classrooms should look like. We change when the little voice inside tells us we need to. And sometimes we change because the kids ask us to. Then we get happy, we stay, we think our change is enough and the years start to tick by, and we forget that we ever needed the change because what we are doing seems to work just fine.

“Just fine…”something I hear so often when I ask people to whether they can change. We hold up our files of success, our pictures of kids engaged, we find the proof we need that things are working and kids are learning, that our change that happened so long ago was enough for now. Yet those kids are not the same, I see that in my own four kids. The twins are nothing like Theadora when she was two, the world has changed a lot since then. And when Augustine turns two, the world will have changed again, and so will the kids in it.

So be proud of your change, but check it too. You may have found it works “just fine” but is it time to change again? To fine-tune? To adapt? To throw it all out? Is it time to listen to the kids that are coming to you now, not those that you taught a few years ago. The ones who are excited to have you be their teacher this year. Is there change that needs to be done for them? I know there is for me.

Be the change, being a teacher, new year, Student-centered, students

3 Easy Things to Try That Will Make a Big Difference

July 26, 2014 Pernille Ripp

The reviews have been rolling my way, quietly, yet loudly making my heart sing.

“I loved #PassionateLearners book by @pernilleripp so much bought copies for our whole staff! Great read for where we are at & wanting to go!”

” I am enjoying your book. You climbed into my head and my thoughts. Thank you for sharing your story.”

“”I never marry an idea, I date it.” Pernille Ripp in Passionate Learners. Great quote from an awesome book!

These people, these strangers, are reading my first book “Passionate Learners…” and they actually like it. What an amazing feeling that is. This book about my own transformation is inspiring others to change the way they teach, helping them give the classroom back to their students too. What an honor to be a part of someone else’s journey of change.

So I am often asked, where do I start? What can I easily do right now to change the way my classroom flows? Here are my top three most frequently given answers (I think).

Ask your students what they want. This simple, yet teacher-changing way of changing the way we teach is also one of the easiest things to do. It is what we do with their answers that may make it hard. So ask your students what they would like their year to be like? What they would like their rules to be? How an assignment should be done. What a great teacher does. And anything else you can think of. I started asking my students all of these questions and more, and then I started changing the way I teach. Why not give them a voice?

Let students work wherever they want. I hate sitting still, I hate being forced to sit in a desk. My students can work wherver they want as long as it works for them and the people surrounding them.

Offer Choice. The very first thing I will do with all of my 7th graders is to ask them to pick the picture book I read aloud to them. Then they will be asked to respond to it in some way. While not full choice, as in, “What do you want to do right now?” it gives them an idea of what our year will be like. That we will share a lot of reading and writing but that their choices in reading and writing matter. That they are here to uncover or shape their inner reader/writer and that their voice matters.

These three simple things can make an incredible difference in any environment. Think of the message it sends from the very beginning; your opinion matters, as do your ideas, and you know yourself best. That is the message I hope to start with and that is the message I hope my students understand.

being a teacher, being me, new year, Student-centered, students

What We Need to Remember

July 25, 2014 Pernille Ripp

“I don’t think I can thank you enough.” And with that, we said goodbye, and our nanny of the last two years left our home for the last time, ready for her new adventure. I held back tears, after all, our nanny has helped us raise them, helped us care for them, helped us love them. We have trusted her with our most important parts; our kids, and she has always lived up to the challenge. I hope our new nanny does too, after all I spent weeks picking her.

When we send our children to school, we don’t have as much choice in who they get as a teacher. We hope, of course, that whomever they get will love them, will care for them, will help them be passionate learners. But the choice is not really ours. We place our faith in an interview process that may have happened long ago, a screening or selection process for class lists that may be mostly random, and we place our faith in the humanity of that very teacher. That they will get our child. That they will love them too. And it is our job to love, to think, to remember.

So before we plan for anything new this year, remember they are a child.

Before we raise our voice, point our finger, shut the door, remember; they are a child.

Before we get frustrated, get ready to discipline, to gossip about that thing that drove us crazy, remember they are a child.

Someone whose parents hopes that you get what they see at home.

Someone whose parents sends their best child to us every day.

Before we assume that parents don’t care, or that there is nothing we can do to help, remember; they are a child.

Before we tell them the long-term consequences of their poor decisions, remember they are a child.

Before we shoot down ideas, reject change, reject new, reject anything other than our own, remember; they are a child and we should be doing our best to give them the best.

Before we hold back, before we leave scars, before we tell a child what they can or cannot do, remember exactly that, they are a child. They do not belong to us, but we get to have them for a bit. They are someone else’s, ours to borrow, ours to safeguard. They are someone’s child, yes, but they are also ours for just a little bit and we can never forget that.

being a teacher, being me, new year, reflection, Student-centered

In Defense of Boredom

July 21, 2014July 21, 2014 Pernille Ripp

You would think Thea, my 5 year old, would be in her element. Long lazy days to do whatever she wants. Beautiful afternoons to spend at the playground next door. Time to read, play, draw, dance, even watch TV. Heaven…except it’s not. Thea is bored. And she tells me frequently whenever I am not playing with her. Whenever we are not doing something.

At first, I jumped into action. Boredom dispelled with fun activities. Boredom banished by mama and her wallet. You want a dog and pony show, coming right up! Except it wasn’t enough, it never was. I found myself searching the web frantically looking for more great activities. Running to the store to buy more stuff. Turning on the TV as a last ditch attempt. Being a boredom buster became a full time job and I was exhausted. Since when did summer become one endless list of to do’s? If she was bored, well, then I was a bad mother.

This happens in our classrooms too. We think that if we aren’t putting on a show, we are not doing our job. That if students aren’t excited and loudly engaged at all times, we must be failing as teachers. We imagine that there will be no time to be bored. Students will practically skip into our classrooms, eager to start. And sure, some days they do. Those days are easy. It is the days where they drag their feet, have to prop open their eyes, stifle yawns and give you that look, those are the days where we really work.

Yet, much like I realized with Thea, it is not my job to be the boredom buster. It is my job to present learning opportunities that might engage, that might excite, that might spark an interest. But I can only do so much. I can only bring so much to the classroom, and at some point the students have to step up too. At some point, they have to embrace their boredom and find out what to do with it. How to work through it. How to be their own boredom busters.

We try to shield children from boredom and in our eagerness forget that being bored is a gift. Being bored is not a four-letter word. It is not something to avoid, nor something to ridicule. Out of boredom comes curiosity. Out of boredom rises innovation. If we do not give our students quiet time, time to reflect, time to be still, yes time they may see as boring, then we are robbing them of time to think.

We think that our classrooms should be loud at all times. That loudness equals learning. Yet, I have found that some of my most powerful teaching moments have been the quiet ones. Where students have had time to think, to be bored, to create, all without me putting on a show. Sure, loudness is important as well. But the true essence of innovation can often be found shrouded in silence, when students are asked to do something about their boredom.

So when Thea tells me she is bored, I ask her what she will do about it. She has run to her room and pulled on her princess dress only then to concoct an elaborate fantasy scene with parts for everyone in the family. She has quietly drawn pictures of things I would never imagine. She has gone to her room and sat with a book. She will never stop telling me she is bored, after all, it seems to be a rite of childhood, but I am no longer the one that rescues her. She is doing that herself. Let’s give the same chance to our students. Let us help them embrace being bored.