being a teacher, inspiration

What is Their Sentence?

Pernille Ripp

Image from I Can Read

After seeing the post by Daniel Pink and some very inspired posts regarding “What’s your sentence?”  I too have been wondering what is it I believe in?  What is my vision, my mission, my dream – what do I some day leave behind?  What is my sentence for the year, for the next 5 years, for my life?  In this thought path it struck me; what is important to me is not what is my sentence is but rather what is their sentence?

Them, those kids, those people we touch every single day; what sentence will they utter about me as they depart my classroom, my home, my life?  Those people that mean everything to me today, what will they remember about me, how will I have affected them?  What will their sentence be?  And more importantly, what would I like it to be? So I dare you to ask; what is their sentence?

So please if you will, share your “their” sentence in the comments. I have a feeling they will be powerful.

being a teacher, classroom expectations, students

So We Breathe

Pernille Ripp
We work hard in my room each and every day.  The students know that to be in a limited homework classroom, they are on the minute they get to school until they leave.  The pressure is on to stay on top of the learning, to be involved, and to grow, grow, grow.  So this week as we finished our dream project, as we inch closer to break, we breathe.  We release, we relax, and we rejuvenate.

As an educator I push my students, I make them reach for the things they are not sure they can touch, that is after all why I am there.  And yet you cannot continue to push kids to their utmost, day in, day out.  And so we breathe, we release, relax, refocus.

Academic rigor still stands, standards must be met, projects must be completed.  Yet our brains slow down, attempt to reconfigure all of this information.  We rewire our thoughts, we charge our spirits and we breathe.

being a teacher, common sense, Decisions, promises

I Am Committed

Pernille Ripp

We all struggle with decisions, every day, every minute. Some decisions become easier as we get more set in our ways, language we use, motions we go through, and yet some never lose their unfamiliarity, their newness, their rawness. As a teacher I cannot begin to count how many decisions I make in a day; language choice, assignments, what I bring into my room and what I take out. TO teach does not just mean to guide the learning, I am also there to make decisions.

So I wish for this for the coming week, month, and year; that whatever decisions I make, I make them fully. That once I commit myself to something, I commit the entire me. Not just a tentative part, but the whole thing. That once my thinking is through and outcomes have been weighed that I then trust myself. That I trust myself to know I made the right decision, that I trust myself enough to agree with my choice, and to perhaps even revel in it. Trust myself to fully commit. Give myself the gift of believing that I made the right decision, perhaps then I can give myself a break. Do you need to commit?

being a teacher, being me, classroom expectations, Student-centered

Don’t Worry – There’s a Routine for That

Pernille Ripp
Image taken from ronnestam.com

Routines, one of the big words in  “teacher school” as we call it in my classroom.  You must set up routines, you must establish them, practice them, train them and share your expectations.  We have routines for everything, and it seems the younger the students are – the more routines we have.  So if you need to go to the bathroom, there’s a routine for that, how to hand in homework, there’s a routine for that, how to answer a question – you guessed it, there’s a routine for that.  And yet as I struggle with keeping track of all of my routines, I wonder; when do the routines become suffocating?

I agree that routines must be in place for the students to know the shared expectations.  After all, accountability is one of the great skills we teach along with math, reading, writing.  Students learn to follow routines because it provides familiarity and safety.  It simply makes school and a classroom more manageable, and more effective.  And yet we can over-routine.  We can ponder and prepare routines for almost everything.  My first year, I spent a whole day preparing a sign for my students, very artistic indeed, writing out routines for what to do when you needed to sharpen your pencil or leave the classroom.  I don’t think any student ever read the poster, let alone memorized it. 

So I realized that perhaps routines were needed for the really big things, like morning routine, how to go to specials or lunch routines, and general classroom behavior routine.  But beyond that, I am done.  I am done routining my students to death.  After all, they are equipped with common sense.  I do not think me writing out how and when they should sharpen their pencils is worthy of their memorization or the title of “routine.”  I think I am going to stop “ruling” them to pieces and let them develop their inner sense of proper behavior.  Do we trust our students enough to pull back some of our rules masqueraded as routines?  I do.