Pernille Ripp

We’ve all been there, bouncing around at your school or home because you just discovered something absolutely, truly, fantastically wonderful that you just cannot wait to try in your teaching. It is a marvelous feeling this one, one that makes you want to sing from the rooftops and share the idea with everyone you meet. And then you do and the person who you indulge it with looks at you blankly. Silence. Deflated, you walk away, thinking to yourself that maybe that idea was not so great after all.

But wait it’s not them, it’s you. Or me in this case. I am one of those can’t wait to try it and then tell everyone about (mostly on this blog) idea kind of people. I get so overly excited about something that I am practically bursting at the seams with my newfound wisdom and my poor husband is forced to listen to hours upon hours of blissful teacher talk. I rave, I rant, I share and then I don’t understand why others don’t see the magic or get as excited to try it as I did. Take Twitter for example, I don’t think I have convinced a single person to get on it, and yet it is one of the most life-altering educational experiences I have ever had. But it’s not the “them” that are to fault, it is me.

We all love great ideas. We all have them and we all share them. Some great ideas work especially well for us and others just really don’t. As I grow as an educator, I am beginning to understand more which type of ideas I am really drawn to; student-centered, technology integration, and no grade/homeworks/rewards etc. are things that just rock my world. Others not so much. So when other people come up to me and share their great idea, I might be the one with that blank stare that does not show any kind of enthusiasm. Because to me it just doesn’t sound that exciting, or it goes against something I think I believe in, or I just don’t have the time.

And that’s when I realize, hey it is okay for others NOT to get excited over my great idea.

After all, being a teacher means you get to work with an incredible array of personalities that have one thing in common; they really love kids. So whichever way, or whichever ideas we use, to get us to change the world one kid at a time, is alright by me. However, I will promise myself that the next time someone presents their great idea to me, even if it seems a little strange, I will give it a good listen, perhaps even try it, and then decide. After all, I can only change myself.

classroom expectations, classroom management, our classroom, punishment, rewards, Student-centered

Put Your Name on the Board – a Tale of Why I Gave Up Classroom Discipline Systems

January 11, 2011July 24, 2013 Pernille Ripp

Image from here

Put your name on the board! Those words spoken in a very stern voice accompanied by a teacher look was enough to whip the toughest student into shape. Except when it didn’t which for me was enough times to make me wonder. Could my discipline systems really be thrown out and replaced with nothing? Would chaos then reign supreme?

If you had come by my room last year you would have seen them. Those sticks in the cups or the names on the boards with checks, sometimes double checks and plenty of stern looks to go around. I was doing exactly what I had been taught in school, exerting my control as the main authority figure and if students misbehaved, well, then there was some form of punishment. Oh don’t worry; there were plenty of rewards as well. If students didn’t move their stick or get their name on the board for a week then their name got entered into drawing for pizza with me. At the end of the month if they didn’t have their name in my book for not doing their homework, they could also enter their name, and then I would finally draw names and five lucky students would have pizza with me. Confused? I was! I could hardly keep check Of all those names, checks, and punishments.

However, last year I realized something after reading Alfie Kohn; I knew I had to change. By perpetually focusing negative energy on the same students, who, lets face it, are most often the ones having their name singled out somehow already, I was indeed just adding more to their self doubt. While I believe in discipline for all students, I also believe in compassion and that philosophy simply was not fitting in with my chosen system. So I did as many teachers may do; I threw it all out. However, instead of hunting for a new system, I decided to detox myself, start this year with no system for reward and punishment and instead strive to create a classroom community where students just know what the expectation is.

I was petrified that first month. I run a tough classroom in my expectations for my students and I know that if you do not set the tone those first weeks, it can be detrimental to the rest of the year. And yet I held strong in my conviction that even the more unruly students would eventually figure this out through repeated conversations and respect. And boy, did we talk. We talked about expectations, rules, how to speak to one another, and what to do when something goes wrong. A lot of the time, I just listened to these amazing students come up with solutions to problems, listened to them explain how they envisioned our classroom, how they wanted fourth grade to be. And I was in awe; these kids knew how to behave without me telling them over and over. And they certainly would figure it out without me alternating punishment and rewards.

So after the first month I started to breathe again. I let our new system flex itself and watched the students help keep the classroom stabile. Sure, there are times when I think ooh if I just had a way to “punish” it would fix this and this and then I realize that perhaps I just need to find some time to speak to that particular student. Now instead of an exasperated tone and a system to keep them in check, we discuss, we try to fix, and we reevaluate. I don’t run the classroom with a complicated system of checks and balances, rewards and punishments, but rather with an atmosphere of community, of belonging. Is it perfect? No, but neither am I, nor my students. I am just glad I believed in my own skills enough to realize that perhaps, just perhaps, my students would know how to behave without me rewarding them for it. Once again, they blew away all of my expectations.

Literacy, Martin Luther King, Reading, writing

A Study in MLK Jr. Day

January 11, 2011 Pernille Ripp

We discuss Martin Luther King Jr. throughout the year, however, in order for the students to understand why they get Monday off, I decided to do a little mini lesson today during literacy to remind them. I am a huge Patty Griffin fan and knew that her song “Up to the Mountain (the MLK Song) would be an incredible piece to study on our Music and Poetry Tuesday’s.

I started out by asking the students why we get Monday off, thankfully most of them knew why and they also knew a little bit about his life. I minored in history so I took the kids back to pre-Civil War times and told them a little bit about Jim Crow Laws. (I don’t want to go into too much detail because we explore it in social studies later this year). Once the background had been set, we talked about the time of MLK and what they knew about him and the Civil Rights Movement. This was at most 10 minutes of my class.

After that I knew I needed to recapture their attention because I had done a lot of talking. So I played them a clip from MLK’s Last Speech also known as his “Up to the Mountaintop” speech. The students were amazed that they were able to watch him speak.

We discussed how he was a preacher so he used biblical text to express his desire for his followers. The kids completely got the duality in his speech once we had mentioned this. I then played them a video of Patty Griffin’s song while they got a print out of the lyrics to follow along with. Having the lyrics was helpful for them since she can be hard to fully understand. Finally, I played the speech clip again without saying anything. Quiet.

I asked them, “What did Patty Griffin use in her song from the speech?” Multiple hands shot up with different answers. They all saw the similarities. And what is more, they understood more how powerful MLK was because they had seen him speak “live.” I ended our viewing with this short video montage from the “I Have a Dream” speech, which never ceases to amaze kids.

We finished the lesson with the students journaling on the topic: Has MLK’s dream come true that we only get judged by our character and not by how we look?

Reading

An Author is Studied

January 10, 2011 Pernille Ripp

In my quest to continue book explorations, I wanted to make sure that students became experts on at least one author. While I like the aspect of a book report in how it opens up new author and genre opportunities for the kids, I am not a fan of the way I have used book reports in the past. So I wanted my students to do an author study instead.

I opened this up for discussion today so that the students could share their input and they came up with the following requirements for how to become an expert on a particular author:

Pick a good author, can be someone yo have read before.
You should figure out the type of author and their particular writing style.
You should read and remember a biography of the author.
We should skip Rick Riordan, since so many students wanted to do him.
If you choose an author of picture books, you must read 7-10 picture books.
If you choose an author of chapter books, you must read 2-3 books or more.
You may work by yourself or with a partner.
If you work with a partner, you should both read the same books and discuss them.
We will have 6 weeks to do this project.

We also discussed how the students would prove that they had indeed become an expert on. The student ideas were:

Do a report
Some type of poster
2-3 glogs
A book
ABC book
Film an interview
Create a documentary about the author
Skype in pretending to be the author
Skit/sketch about important part of the author’s life
Timeline with books and biography
Dress up and pretend you are the author

I now have a master list of who the students are researching, we have gotten books from the library and the students are giving me a thumbs up as for the excitement about the project. Time in class will be given to read and research but students must manage their time appropriately for our deadline of February 21st.

I will be creating a biography sheet for those students that need it, and the rest have been instructed to use their reading notebooks to gather all of their information. I cannot wait to share more resources and their projects!

Here is a student’s take on what it means to do an author study.

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.

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