Category: students

blogging, students, writing

So Blogging is just for Fun?

Pernille Ripp

In the past 3 weeks my students have finally gotten to start blogging on their own. We did not take this endeavor lightly and therefore first had to discuss safety of blogging and being on the Internet, see this post on the lesson used.  We also had to discuss how to properly comment on other posts through the use of paper blogs, a lesson I wish I had come up with but which I absolutely borrowed from some fantastic educators and its creator Leonard Low, and how to solicit comments on one’s own; after all, these blogs were meant to be starts of conversations and not solitary pieces of writing.  Finally, we were ready.

Our first blog post was tied in with the Global Read Aloud Project and if you visit our kidblog you will notice that many of them do tie in with this.  However, I hope you will also notice something else; how the students have started to type using paragraphs with topic sentences as well as how their blogs appear visually.   See, I am all for creative writing but I also have a writing curriculum to teach so I therefore combined the students’ passion towards blogging, and believe me they are blogging in their free time, with my requirements for writing.  So one week was dedicated to the fine tunings of a paragraph, discussing not just the how (they mostly know that already) but also the why.  The result of that week’s focus was these introduction posts.  This week we are discussing types of sentences and you will notice, hopefully, later this week how students have to use different types of sentences in their blog posts.

So to those educators that still think student blogging is just for fun, I say, not in my classroom!  Of course, blogging is a blast, after all, how often do kids beg to write more over the weekend or groan when time is up?  Yet blogging is so much more than that; it is writing for an actual audience, not just the teacher, it is learning how to engage in a written conversation, how to constructively criticize writing, as well as appreciate other people’s skills and abilities.  Blogging has brought my fantastic students even closer as they reach out and cheer for each other.  Blogging has taught us that it matters that our writing makes sense because otherwise we may not get many comments or questions.  It is teaching us that we are not solitary writers and hopefully never will be.  Blogging for us is a life lesson of communication, writing, connections, and internet safety mixed in with conventions, crafts of a writer, and as well as the writing process.  To us it is how writing is taught with the added bonus of portfolio creation.  So to those that think student blogging is just a fad,  a way to amuse and use some technology, think again; blogging can a revolution in writing if you let it.  Don’t stand in its way.

aha moment, being a teacher, PLN, students

I’ve Always Been a Teacher – Edna’s Aha Moment

Pernille Ripp
Edna was one of the first international connections to my PLN and has been one of the most inspiring as well. Never afraid to lend and ear or give advice, she has been a wonderful person to learn from. Edna is a teacher and curriculum coordinator at an IB PYP school (Primary Years Program) in Melbourne, Australia. She blogs at What Ed Said and is @whatedsaid on Twitter.



I’ve always been a teacher. Not the sort who does the same things year in, year out, though. I’ve always enjoyed change and challenges and been willing to experiment with new ideas.

But I’ve been teaching a long time and I admit there have been things I have done just because I always did them that way. I always liked using computers, but I had no idea of the possibilities…

My ‘aha’ moment came a couple of years ago, when I read an extract from ‘Navigating through the Storm, Education in Postmodern Democratic Society’ by Ron Aviram, head of The Center for Futurism in Education, in Israel. To be honest, till then, I had not thought much about the fact that education in schools hadn’t changed, while everything else in the world was changing rapidly and radically.

Then I attended my first international conference in Singapore, a gathering of 700 IBO educators from the Asia Pacific. What motivated me wasn’t so much the content, as the opportunity to network with educators from around the world and to witness the things that teachers had done in their classrooms and schools.

I started reading online and began to discover some inspirational education blogs.  Soon I had subscribed to quite a number and was reading voraciously online about educational reform and how others were integrating technology into their classrooms.
I started experimenting with web 2.0 tools and implementing them into my teaching. I introduced my class to ToonDoo and Voicethread to enhance their learning. We learned together.  As I discovered new and useful tools, I shared them with my class and with other interested teachers at school.

The ICT teacher at my school was thrilled to have an accomplice at last. We started a voluntary tech group for interested teachers to experiment together every fortnight before school. Our ‘Thinking group‘ which meets on the alternate week had been sharing readings and implementing Visible Thinking and soon the 2 groups began to merge as a 21st century learning group.  Discussions centred on making learning relevant and authentic, including the integration of technology. This is my in-school PLN.

I joined nings, such as Classroom 2.0 and PYP Threads and began to participate online.  Then a friend encouraged me to start writing my own blog. At first I didn’t think I had anything to say. Then I didn’t think I would have any readers. But I pushed forward and was soon addicted. I had more things to write about than time to write them.  I didn’t care if I had an audience or not, the process was part of my own learning.

And then, by far the best thing happened. I had dabbled in Twitter and not yet seen the point. But, once I figured out the benefits of following educators and educational hashtags, and once I discovered #edchat, I was on the road to the most powerful learning yet. Over the coming months, I began to develop a worldwide PLN. Learning from them and with them, I discovered and uncovered resources, tools, ideas, challenges… and inspiration. Interacting with educators around the world has pushed my thinking, clarified my ideas and motivated me to explore different kinds of learning for myself, my students and my school.

I’ve always been a teacher. Not the sort who does the same things year in, year out, though. I’ve always enjoyed change and challenges and been willing to experiment with new ideas. But I’ve changed more in the last couple of years as a teacher and a learner than in the preceding 25 years!



AHA!

Be the change, reflection, students

Stop Seeing Red Cars

Pernille Ripp
You know that kid I am about to write about.  That pencil swirling, head lay downing, always poking kid.  He always has en excuse for why he is doing whatever he is doing that is greatly annoying you at the time.  And I say “he” only because I have never had a “she” but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  So you try your most patient tone of voice, you conference one on one on your feelings and how they are hurt whenever he does that thing he does so well.  He promises sometimes to get better but remember it really wasn’t his fault.  And you don’t believe him but you give him the benefit of the doubt, after all, you love all children.  5 minutes later he is doing those things again; not listening, fiddling, goofing off.  You panic and think you must be boring, non-enigmatic, sleep inducing and yet a little voice tells you that he is the problem, not you.

So you try a different approach; a stern warning; we will call your parents.  And yet those parents where the ones that told you their son was a little strange, good luck with him.  He doesn’t seem to care too much about that either, after all, they have had that same phone call many times before.  So you wish you had a punishment system, some sort of way you could take something away from him until he behaved.  Until he conformed.  Until he stopped doing those things.  And then you realize, hey wait, stop seeing red cars.

In my first teaching year, I had to take a mentor class, and although some times it was more a social gathering than educational, one video stands out.  In it the narrator speaks of the “red car syndrome” as in you buy a red car and all of a sudden when you drive it, all you ever see are all of the other red cars.  Well, inherently we as teachers see red cars in our classrooms too.  You hone in on that kid and instead of ever seeing all of the improvements, or the struggle to act the right way, you only see the problems, the slips, the slides, the just not acting the perfect way.  You see only the behavior you loathe, that upsets you.  So stop!  Be aware of it, speak to him about it, and then realize you are hyper-focused on him.  This kid did not wake up that morning and decide this is how he would act in school; you are after all the next teacher in a long line of teachers before you.  This may take years to help him with, or even better yet, find a way to make it work.  Don’t let it overwhelm you, don’t let it bring you down, but more importantly do not take your frustration out on the kid.  After all, he would probably rather be a perfect child too (which by the way, perfect children do not exist).  So stop seeing red cars, instead embrace, celebrate and realize that we are all human beings, quirks and all, even if that human being happens to be 9 years old.

aha moment, Be the change, students

Anyone Can Learn – Aviva’s Aha Moment

Pernille Ripp
This week’s Aha Moment is shared by Aviva Dunsiger, also known on Twitter as @grade1, and she is a a Grade 1 teacher in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. She is an active member of my PLN who helps many teachers both new and old. She taught Kindergarten for eight years before making the move to Grade 1. Aviva loves using various Web 2.0 tools in her classroom to make learning more meaningful for students. As she says: Through my Grade 1 Website, Grade 1 Blog, Professional Blog, and Student Blogs, I share my own learning with others, and my students share their learning too. Many thanks to Pernille Ripp (@4thGrdTeach) for asking me to do the Guest Blog Post this week. I’m excited to share my Aha Moment with all of you!

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to teach. When I was in Kindergarten and Grade 1, I used to pretend to play school, and I even wrote my lessons on the wall. There’s a house somewhere in Thornhill, Ontario that still has my Process Writing Lesson on the wall underneath numerous coats of paint.:)
School never came easily for me though, and while I always worked hard, I never seemed to make the grade. In Grade 2, I had a Psych Assessment done, and I found out that I had a non-verbal learning disability. I will never forgot the feedback from that Psych Assessment: I was told that due to the severity of my learning disability, I would always struggle with school, and I would be lucky if I even made it to college. In other words, forget about university, and forget about my dreams of becoming a teacher. I was devastated!

 Looking back now, I guess that I could have given up at that point. I never did though. Despite having a really significant learning disability, I also had some really significant strengths. I learned how to capitalize on those strengths. My mom and step-dad helped teach me strategies to be successful in the classroom and to advocate for myself so that I got the accommodations that I needed to be successful too. I always spent double the amount of time on the homework as my peers, and in certain subjects, like geography, the lessons would often lead to tears and frustration, but I never gave up. I wanted to teach!

Thanks to self-advocacy, amazing support from home, and strategies that really worked, I ended up graduating from high-school on the honour roll, and I even got a scholarship to university. It was when I got the phone call from the President of Nipissing University offering me a Presidential Scholarship and a place in the Bachelor of Arts and Introduction to Teaching Program, that I had my Aha Moment: anyone can learn! As teachers, we just need to find a way to ensure that all students do learn. I cannot thank my wonderful teachers enough: they didn’t give up on me, and as a result, I never gave up on myself.

This is my tenth year teaching, and every year, I get a new group of students and a new opportunity to make a difference. My own experience has taught me that we can never give up on our students, and that we need to find a way to ensure that all of them succeed. At the bottom of all of my e-mails, I have this signature: “If they don’t learn the way you teach, teach the way they learn.” I am thankful for the teachers that did just this for me, and I will always do this for my students too!
education reform, reflection, students

So Oprah Thinks I Care?

Pernille Ripp

I got into education to be a teacher.  Think of that statement fore it may be simple but it is powerful.  I am here to teach.  Not to save, not to comfort, not to emphathise, but to teach.  Yet all of these other aspects of the job are things I do gladly, willingly, and often.  In fact, every day I look forward to coming to my job, every day, I know that my students will surprise me, amaze me, question me.  How many people have that intimate luxury of truly loving what they do.  I do, and no matter what Oprah says, or the people who follow her every word; I am making a difference.
Of course, I was as outraged as most after the infamous show on education.  Who wouldn’t be when something that they work so hard at every day, that we shed tears over, comes under attack?  And then you distance yourself from it, remove yourself from the equation and think about what was truly said.  Yes, the educational system in America is in crisis, and yes, there are “bad” teachers, or ineffective ones as Michelle Rhee called them,.  And yes, the show forgot to highlight the incredible people that love what they do.  And why are we surprised?  It is not sensational to tell people that you love your job, or that you work 14 hour days, or you come in on the weekends to set up your room and get ready.  It is not shocking that you give students’ rides so they can come to school functions.  It is not newsworthy that you spend your summers learning how to be better, smarter, more accountable.  And yet, that is what we do.   And we do it because we want to.

Teaching is a choice for me.  It was never a calling in the true sense of the word, but when I came to it, it was right, and I knew it.  I knew that here was a chance for me to reach out and make a difference.  Yes, it is a cliche to some but cliche can also mean that it is a universal truth that we all accept and repeat.  If you do not believe that you can change the world then you don’t have any business being a teacher.  And so what if Oprah focused on the negatives.  That is the type of society we have become; negativity sells.  Negativity makes people do.  And doing is what we need!  So while some are waiting for Superman, I keep on going to my job, that I cannot even call a job because I love it that much.  And yes, I know I will never be rich and in this society that is a hard truth, but so what?  I breathe teaching.  I live for these kids.  They are my family as much as my husband and daughter are.  I am not worried about what Oprah says or anyone else for that matter as long as I know I am making a difference.  And no one can take that away from me.  So don’t let it be taken away from you!
reflection, students

We Are Not Role Models

Pernille Ripp

The following is a guest post I wrote for @Mrmacnology’s blog, I asked him if I could also post it here.  
I am not a role model, nor do I ever fool myself into thinking I am one. Of course, it would be a fabulous designation to have but when I look at my true self in the mirror, I know that I am flawed. Not flawed in a deep serious way, but in a human way. My path did not go straight to teaching but rather to ragtag jobs where I gained human experience, failed attempts, and people to celebrate it all with. And I am proud of that. These scars, bumps and bruises along my life path are what make me, well, me. If I were a role model I would never fail, never falter, always know the right course. If I were a role model, I would know which method lead to direct success rather than bumble along and discover knowledge with my students. The journey would be mapped out with no room for detours and the teaching would take care of itself.
Role models are up there with heroes. People like to proclaim teachers as everyday heroes, as role models, elite self-sacrificing angels that give up their whole lives to rescue the future of America. Yet, we are not self-sacrificing or perhaps even heroes and I think that is a good thing. We are every day people trying our hardest to reach every kid and to more importantly make every kid believe in themselves. If we were heroes or angels, no one could attain to reach our status, no one could want to be like us because we would be too perfect.
So perhaps we are role models in a bruised and battered kind of way. We are role models for the believers, for the thinkers, for the can doers. We are role models for the kids that we embrace, the kids that we cheer on, the kids that we believe in. We are role models for ourselves. But we are not heroes, just ordinary people and that is how I want to stay.