students – Page 30 – Pernille Ripp

Warning, This Will Not Be On a Test!

January 20, 2011 Pernille Ripp

Today we went sledding. 23 screaming kids, 3 excited teachers and one measly hill covered in snow that did not know what was coming. My students didn’t earn this experience, well, I am sure they have, but not in the traditional sense of earning. Instead, I looked out the window yesterday during class and realized that the snow was just perfect. The kind of snow that only comes a couple times a year in Wisconsin; pristine, fluffy, begging to be used for childish pursuits. So I declared that we would go sledding today, and indeed we did.

There was no educational value in this experience, nothing that will be assessed, reviewed or graded. I didn’t veil it as such either. I wanted to have fun, I wanted the kids to all play together, I wanted to be a kid for a while. So there we were, celebrating that literacy assessments were done with our sub and speech teacher. All kids sharing sleds, a student with autism not sledding but giving pushes to any child that needed one for extra speed. We were all there, loving the moment. Pictures? Nah, I was too busy having fun. And that is ok.

being a teacher, education reform, Student-centered, students

Let’s Set the Record Straight

January 19, 2011 Pernille Ripp

Today was a great day for quiet excitement; I was thrilled to see that the archive from my presentation at The New Teacher Reform Symposium had been released. So it was with much anticipation, thrill, and dread that I sent the link to my biggest fan and critic; my husband, Brandon. Certainly he would have something for me to work on, I was not disappointed. After some wonderful compliments he wondered whether people now think that my students run around chaotically in the classroom, just exploring wildly without any direction.

Hmm, I thought, I better set the record straight.

My classroom is a bit loud, that I will admit. And not necessarily because I like loudness, I don’t, in fact I like it to be silent when I write, but what I do like is learning. So because I have spent too many minutes shh’ing kids for the wrong reasons, there is more chatter and movement in my room then there used to be. There is also a great deal more choice, as in, I chose the direction in which we are headed but the kids help me figure out how we get there. While some label this student-centered learning, I am not sure that is what I do; I just figured out something needed to change and that something turned out to be me.

So while I have as much curriculum and standards to race through as other districts, assessments that must be done and certain assignments that belong in fourth grade, I also have a lot of freedom in how I get there. Sure we have a set math and science program, but even under those constraints I find a great deal of autonomy. If there wasn’t, I do believe, it would be stifling. This also happens to be a strength of my building and my district; while certain things are mandated, others are not, so we can be ourselves, the types of teachers we want to be without others wagging their fingers at us.

So to set the record straight; my classroom is not an explosion of exploration (most days), but what it is is an environment created to offer choice in learning style and rigor. I find that happens best for me when I point the direction and then let the students steer with me. The direction I am headed this year; I could never go back.

students

A Student Nominates their Person of the Year

January 14, 2011 Pernille Ripp

We nominated our Person of the Year today and this is what one of my amazing students wrote:

My person of the year is Martin Luther King Jr. because if he didn’t do what he did I wouldn’t be in here with my fantastic teacher and awesome friends. I, instead, would not have friends, teachers, or rights. He was willing to make people’s lives int he future better even if he was not the best.

Martin Luther King was a great man and I am glad him and other people like Rosa Parks were born. He did not care if people bombed his house or threatened him. If he was not born, my dream of becoming a football player or baseball player would never be close to coming true. The reason I chose Martin Luther King is he made my life the best it could ever be. That’s my person of the year; Martin Luther King Jr.

To see the post and leave Lewis a comment, please go to his post.

assumptions, students

Wait, I’m a Foreigner Too

January 9, 2011 Pernille Ripp

We are at the grocery store and my daughter starts to run away, I yell after her “Thea, kom her nu” and other Danish after her until she comes running back. As I turn back to the cash register I notice the glance from the cashier and I think, “Yes, I am foreigner too.” Being a Dane with every stereotype personified (tall, blonde) in America means people in general do not realize that English is not my first language. While this is a blessing most of the time, it always astounds me how much of that perception is based on my looks and my name. I married into a big farm name in this area so my last name “Ripp” means most do not give me a second glance even after stumbling through my first name, which is as about as typically Danish as one can get.

I also do not have an accent. An early gift from my mother was living in San Francisco at the age of 6 and being thrust into a 1st grade classroom not speaking a single word of English. Directions were mimed and friendships were formed through glances and lots of hand movement. Perhaps this is why I speak so much with my hands now? Either way, research shows that children pick up the native accent if they are exposed to a language before a certain age and I happen to fall into that category. So when most people discover that I am indeed fresh off the boat so to speak, there are two reactions: “Wow, I had no idea” or “Oh, I thought I heard an accent” (to which I always think, no, you didn’t).

So why am I bothering share this story? Because it made me think of how we treat students who may be a higher level ELL (English Language Learners). Those non-native speakers that speak so well that we forget that English is not their first language. We generally remove our support in the classroom, expecting them to do just as well as their English-first speaking peers and then are surprised when sometimes they don’t. We get fooled by their conversational language and perhaps even their academic one, and then do not understand why their written work may be not as strong or another academic area.

So as I think of my own experience as an ELL student, I recognize my own need to re-support those students that may “sound” just fine. Those students that are very strong but are still learning. After all, although we are all still learning, when something is not your native language it does add another exciting dimension to your progress. So enough with my own assumptions, I must not forget about the whole history of the child and not just their present day status.

being a teacher, education reform, Student-centered, students

Let Them Speak – Notes from my RSCON#11 Presentation

January 9, 2011 Pernille Ripp

Just a disclaimer with these; they were written late one night as I was brainstorming what i would present on. They are not polished but just free thoughts as I went through my slides.

Hi, my name is Pernille Ripp and I am not an expert. I am a 4th grade teacher in a school with around 450 students and I am on a journey. A journey into questioning everything I was taught in school, a journey that has led me here today opening up about why my classroom is changing, and hoping to inspire others to question their classroom as well.

Many articles have been written about student centered classrooms, there are many people that know more than me, use them, connect with them on twitter or through the internet. I am only here to tell you my story, so let’s begin.

Last year I had fantastic students, I felt more confident, and I had a great team, and yet at the end of the year I was deflated. I was spent. I questioned what I was doing as a teacher, why did I teach the way I did and why did the method I had been taught just not seem to work? I shared this with my husband and he asked me, “What can you change?”

So I joined Twitter and started thinking about who I was as a person and how I wanted to be as a teacher. I also started blogging and doing most of my thinking aloud. I knew a big problem for me was the amount of control I had in the classroom, it seemed to be a dictatorship at times, and yet, I didn’t know how to change it or whether I could do it at all.

Control – a huge word in education. In college we are taught tricks on how to control our classroom, or classroom management strategies. But the control doesn’t stop there, we not only have to control the room, but also the learning. There are many books written on how to control the learning in your room and we eagerly read them as new teachers, desperate and afraid of not having it. So if you walk by most traditional classroom settings what you will see is the teacher at the front of the room, talking at the students that are sitting in neat rows all facing the teacher, or at least that was my room. Questions are answered when students raise their hand, or not at all. It is evident who is in charge.

Some people think the opposite of control must be assumed chaos. Because if there is not a clear power structure in the room then no one will know how to act, behave or learn.

This was almost my classroom last year, I had pods but still it was all about me. I was always in control, carefully planning out every lesson, every step. There is a beginning point, a middle, a finished product that then gets graded and handed back. Once it is handed back to the students that journey is finished. Students are participants in the stalest form of the word. They are participating in what the teacher allows them to participate in. There is no shared control.

So what happens when we give up that control to the students and create a student centered classroom? Well, most people assume that chaos reigns supreme. I was one of those people. I was petrified of the little things, of noise, of clutter, of not being in control at all times. I thought my classroom would be wild and crazy filled with screaming kids that refused to work. Instead this is what happened, this is from a regular day doing writing in my classroom.

Student centered means putting the focus on the students rather than the teacher. Think of how powerful that statement is. We think as teachers that that is what we do at all times, but is is not true. It is often a show put on by the teacher where the students get to watch and do some work, but every step of the way has been predetermined. The path has been chosen and we are in a hurry to get to our destination. So when the focus is shifted back to the students we have to ask ourselves how will my students learn this? How will they explore and get to our goal? The how becomes just as important as the what.

The first step is to realize that you as the teacher no longer is the only authority on learning. Students are given control as well and you step back from your big brother role. To do this you have to realize first what you can let go of and what you cannot. I knew there were certain things such as interrupting others that I would never be ok with, but many other things such as sitting in desks, rubrics, grades, homework, I could let go of.

So in the truest sense of the words, it is elementary. We must unlearn some of the lessons from college and our experience and stop hogging the limelight. And this is much easier than it sounds.

So baby steps becomes the way to first do it. Many students are not prepared for student centered learning. Their voice has been hushed or diminished for so many years that we first have to help them find it again. This can be accomplished through activities already in the first week. Some things I did was have them create classroom rules, and also have them help me set up the room. This way they already started taking ownership of our learning environment.

I also spoke to them about my choices and the why’s behind my decision to get rid of grades and most homework. For more information on that you can see my blog. I also kept quiet a lot of the time. Now I am a talker, but they needed to see that it wasn’t all about me from the very first day. This is huge. Set the tone from the very first moment you meet them. Explain to them the journey you are going on and how you will be challenging them, it was incredible to see the kids get excited about all of my crazy ideas and it was a great way to field any questions right away both from students and parents.

Then began the actual learning and the real challenge begins. We are so used to being the bringers of learning that we forget what it means to let students explore. This was and is my biggest challenge. I still have to stop myself from just talking at students. So instead, for everything I continuously ask myself what is the goal of this lesson? If I know the goal, then I can backtrack from there. An example could be a unit on crayfish, I have a set curriculum I am supposed to guide the students through. I chose to instead ask the students what they wanted to learn and do with these animals. I knew the overall goal of the unit was to teach them respect for life and animals. Well, you can certainly get there in many ways. By giving the students ownership of the unit, they became much more invested.

so ask yourself what the goal is of your lesson. Can it be accomplished through an exploration rather than a teacher led discussion? Most of the time it can. Another huge lesson for me was to actually inform the students of our goal. How many of you teach without telling the students what the goal of the lesson is? I used to until I realized it is like putting someone in a car every day without telling them their destination or purpose of the trip. It doesn’t make any sense. Once students know the destination or goal you will be surprised at their methods for getting there. In fact, students are usually way more creative than I will ever be in coming up with project ideas.

It doesn’t always go perfect though, so then what do you do? Well, you ask the students what went wrong. In a recent exploration of Native Americans, my students asked to pick their own research projects and choose their own finished products. I was scared and excited since this would prove to be my biggest letting go of the year. I did meet with the kids to hear their project ideas and help them if needed. It was amazing to watch kids do their thing. Almost all of the kids were deeply engaged and very, very excited about the project. When it came time to present their finished project one pair of boys came up and told me they were not done. In fact, for two weeks there weren’t quite sure what they were really supposed to be doing. Instead of asking me for help they just made it look like they were busy and when I walked by they were always working on something, or so it seemed. So what did we learn? Well all of us learned to ask more questions! Also for me to tune in even more. While most kids were ready to do this free of a project, some were not.

This is a major point of student-centered learning; not all students are ready for the same level of freedom. Some benefit from working with a teacher as facilitator and others can do it on their own. It also completely depends on the project and can change all of the time. My students whom others may consider to be struggling did really well in this project. So make yourself available to all of the students and don’t be surprised by who asks for help.

Another important aspect of this type of learning is to really give students an outlet for their voice. I accomplished this through student blogging. I use kidblog.org, which is a free blogging websites particularly for teachers and students. Greta Sandler did an incredible presentation on the how and why of student blogging, which I have linked in my presentation. Every week my students have a blogging challenge where I get to either reinforce something we have discussed in class such as protagonist and antagonist, or I pick their brains. I ask my students questions about the classroom, about me as a teacher, about what they would change, what they like or dislike. And they are honest! If you give kids a chance to tell you they will. We worked hard on how to comment and blog and now it has become one of our biggest tools for communicating. Never mind all of the people we have connected with throughout the world. Now when my students talk about projects they try to bring the world in rather than just focusing on their own little world. This shift in perception could not have been done without student blogging.

So what all of this means to me is really just focusing on the students. My goal is to make sure that these kids still love going to school when they are done with fourth grade and student-centered learning helps me do that.
ask yourself, what can you let go of? What do you not need to be in control of? When can you be quiet? And continue to question yourself! I certainly do not have all of the answers and yes some times I have to talk to the students and be the bringer of knowledge but if you balance that with student led explorations, you will see it becomes less and less you and more them. And ask the students what and how they want to learn something, they bring quite a bit of knowledge in as well. As teachers we cannot be the only people with the knowledge, we have to give that power back to the students. Student-centered learning is the tool to do that.

I thought I would end with letting my students speak for me, because in the end, it is truly all about them.

aha moment, assumptions, being a teacher, memories, school staff, students

It Happened at a Meeting

January 6, 2011 Pernille Ripp

Today I took notes at our staff meeting. Yes, a highly unusual task for me as I just sit and listen most of the time. But today was a day for note taking as we discussed hidden assumptions in life. I have written about this before mainly on this post, but the discussion keeps pulling me back in as I continue to challenge myself.

To assume means to suppose to be the case, without proof and it is this last bit of the definition that really sparked my interest today. When we assume in our classrooms, do we do it because it is easy? Because of intellectual laziness? Or is it some inane need to classify in order to navigate through life?

As teachers we often assume whether we can admit or not. We assume perhaps that a child who rides a certain bus has a laundry list of issues that need correcting. Or a child who comes from a wealthy neighborhood should be fine academically. Perhaps we assume socioeconomic status based on a pair of worn out shoes, rather than stop to ask the child, who may in the end, just really like those shoes. We provide snacks for the kids who live in rental properties, and extra time to do homework because their home-life may be tough, but how often do we ask our middle-class kids whether they are having difficult or whether food is sparse at their house? So in this instance, we assume because we are used to it.

I didn’t start my job with these assumptions, in fact, I prided myself on how much of blank slate I was. And yet, here they are now, fighting me every day. We see our class list and images and connotations frequent our thoughts until we meet the kids and then (hopefully) realize how wrong we are. We base our class lists for the coming year on even more assumptions about how a certain student may be do in a certain class based on the assumptions we make about that teacher. Sometimes others correct us and sometimes the assumptions is given more life because others nod their head, already victims of the same cloaked inferences.

So why are assumptions bad? As a victim of many, I can tell you they diminish you as a person unless you fight hard enough to break out of them. Because I moved a lot as a child due to my mother being awarded Fullbright scholarships, I was assumed to be transient with everything that entails. Because I was taught English at a very young age, and thus was the only 1st grader fluent in English, I was assumed to be gifted, which I am not. Because I was raised by an incredible single parent, I was assumed to have “daddy” issues or be the victim of a lackluster childhood, when the opposite is true. My mother’s scholarships means I learned what it means to be a global citizen. Being fluent in English means that I can teach my class with a native accent, rather than the awful Danish one (Lars Ulrich anyone?), and being raised by the most passionate and inspiring of mother’s who later married her soulmate gave me a role-model that I will forever try to emulate both in life and in love. In short, my “messed up life” on paper proved to be a fantastic journey.

As we pass our assumptions on in the hallways, meetings, or lounge conversations, we breathe new life into them. When we have one more child that fits the bill of what we thought they would be like, then we pat ourselves on the back, and know that we were right to categorize them such in the first place. Every year, as more students come our way, we strengthen our categories, our distinctions, and it becomes harder to see the truth, to wipe them all away.

Some will argue that there is nothing wrong with assuming certain things, and I agree that this is not a black and white discussion. Yet something has to be done with the monologue constantly running in our heads. When we do not speak our assumptions aloud, no one is there to refute them, and so they take on more “truthiness” until we don’t remember a time when we didn’t know this to be a fact. We have to fight our assumptions before we make them truths, the future of our students are at stake.