Tag: teachers

Be the change

This Year I Am Boring My Students (On Purpose)

Pernille Ripp

I have been thinking a lot about boredom. And how so many of us, yes, myself included, seem to be almost allergic to it. I am not aware of this obviously when I search for constant stimulus, but my brain is.

It shows up in the exhaustion I feel at the end of the day, in the way I can’t quite remember the details of my life like I used to. How my own kids will bring up events that they remember so clearly, and yet I don’t even remember them happening.

I feel my hand reach for my phone before I am even aware of my brain telling me to do it. As I write this in my greenhouse, my phone lies next to me, calling to me with a quick check of Instagram to see how my latest post is doing, or perhaps to extend that Snapstreak I have with my husband.

None of this is new.

People much smarter than me have been ringing the alarm on attention issues and how we all need to be more bored, more often, for years. We know it. We try it. And then we get busy again, and we are right back to the cycle of stimulus chasing.

And yet, we also know that within boredom lies creativity, and so it is this that I ruminate on today. Because where did my own creativity go? And what happens to creativity when those behind all the latest AI tools want us to believe that it can come from a machine? What happens to creativity when we can be handed a manual for practically everything we can dream of doing, and assume that because our worlds are so filled already, what we have invented and created now is enough?

I see it with my students too. When I tell them to free draw, they immediately ask me if they can watch how to draw on YouTube. When I propose a dance break, they want a Just Dance with choreographed dance moves. When I invite them to write a story, often it is the first idea they go with, and often that idea is inspired by a game, a movie, or set in a world not created by them.

When I push them beyond the scripted or the known, they get a little lost. The insistence of needing help grows louder, the confidence drops, sometimes even followed by tears.

It turns out not knowing what to do, or not having a guide to follow, is a really scary place for some.

And I get it.

In a world where so many of us feel like we need to be perfect because that is all we are surrounded by, who wants to stand out as unique or creative? After all, when you take a risk, others may not like it, others may judge you. And with phones ever present, it is no longer just those close enough to you that can witness your strangeness. The whole world can point its finger and laugh.

So how do we invite boredom into our classes? Because it is kind of the opposite of what we have been told to do for so many years.

Do more, make it exciting, teach like a — insert whatever. Bring the exuberance and plan many activities in a short amount of time so you don’t lose their attention. Faster. More tech. More tools. More colors and noises. Bombard them so they don’t want to look away. Feel a dip in energy, do a game. Eyelids getting heavy — brain break!

And we leave the days needing to recover because our brains were never supposed to take so much in, no matter how well we think we do at it.

If we already know that we can’t win in the dopamine race that our brains are constantly in, then why even bother entering?

Because I am sick of running at a furious pace just to keep up with something I wasn’t meant to keep up with. And so in some ways, this year, unintentionally, I have been trying to bring boredom back into my classroom.

Slowing down purposefully, inviting children to sit in the discomfort of not getting help right away, telling them to try even when they are frustrated.

We have started with reading for more than 10 minutes now. A slow invitation into community and stories that allows everyone to settle in, settle down, and sink into their minds. I am steadfast in my commitment that this is one of the largest gifts we can give children. A book where they get to find peace, hopefully.

We do choose your own writing every week. Four choices are presented, or they can do their own, and as the year has grown so has the given time. Write beyond what you think you can. Allow yourself to think. No rush to get started, but select something that piques your attention. And keep at it. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be written.

Our art classes have been freer, techniques shown, and then make something. Back to the basics of how to use the world for inspiration, mixed in with more formal lessons.

Saying no to brain breaks as a way to relax, and instead recognizing them as a way to hype up. They bring the energy, not a break, and so I use them for that purpose.

Using our class meeting as a way to reflect on how our community is and what it needs work on, and taking the time it takes because that is the whole lesson.

Staying with our read aloud and not offering opportunities to do anything else while you listen, except that you can choose to lie down if you would like.

Actively looking for places to slow down, focus in, and not feel the urge to rush through lessons in order to keep the excitement up. Sure, that three week unit on idioms should have ended two weeks ago, but we are still in it, and we are still having fun.

I need them to be present, I would love for them to be alert, but I am going to give them time to be involved longer.

And so as I dream of next year, although I still teach until June 26th, as we do in Denmark, I am thinking of more ways to cultivate boredom, and hopefully creativity, with my new 1st graders.

I asked Claude what ideas it had to share, and of course it complimented me on my thinking, because according to AI, I am a genius. But the ideas shared beyond that were worth perhaps considering. Or perhaps, when I garden next, where I have banned AirPods and music, my mind will wander and more ideas will flow as my hands dig in the dirt and order starts to take shape. Because after all, I discovered that my key to creativity is dirty hands and plans that promise a bright future.

From Claude:

What a great question — and a countercultural one. Here are some ways to build productive boredom into your teaching:

Create empty space and protect it

The instinct is to fill every minute. Resist it. Build in unstructured time with no task attached — even 5–10 minutes where students have nothing they have to do. Don’t rescue them from the discomfort. That discomfort is the point.

Give prompts with no right answer and then go quiet

Ask a question, then wait far longer than feels comfortable. Don’t fill the silence. Don’t rephrase. Just wait. Students will eventually stop looking to you for direction and start looking inward.

Remove the scaffold before they feel ready

A lot of creative paralysis comes from over-scaffolded tasks. Give a topic, a blank page, and nothing else. The constraints they invent themselves are always more interesting than the ones you provide.

Slow down repetitive tasks on purpose

Repetition — copying, tracing, sorting — creates a kind of mild cognitive float that’s actually fertile ground for ideas. Don’t apologize for it. Let minds wander during it.

Ban “I’m done”

When students finish early, don’t give them the next thing. Say: now just sit with it for a bit. Make “done” a beginning rather than an ending.

Build in maker/wonder time with no product requirement

Time to draw, build, mess around with materials — with no expectation of output. No sharing, no display, no rubric. The absence of an audience changes everything.

Let lessons meander sometimes

Follow a tangent even if it takes you off-plan. Model for students that curiosity doesn’t always lead somewhere useful — and that’s fine. Wandering has value.

The underlying principle: most creativity tools in school inadvertently kill boredom by replacing it with stimulation. The goal is to stop filling the gap and trust that students will eventually fill it themselves — with something that came from them, not from you.

Reading Identity

When a Child Says They Hate Reading: What to Ask Next

Pernille Ripp

It seems, no matter what I do, it still happens. Year after year.

I started this work in 2010 and the voices were smaller then. Present but quiet. Now, with passive consumerism, with the need to be constantly entertained, with the pressures of life growing for so many kids due to inequity, it seems to have grown to a cacophony of voices. Eagerly chanting. Even from my 1st graders. Before they had even fully learned to read, they would say it.

I hate reading.

I know I cannot be the only one.

So what do we do? How do we speak to them in a way that shows we are actually listening — and also that it doesn’t have to be this way?

I don’t think the answer is a better book recommendation. I don’t think it’s making reading more fun or more gamified or more rewarded. I think it starts with a question. The right question. One that treats what they said as information rather than a problem to solve.

I’ve been collecting those questions for a while now. The ones that seem to open something up rather than shut it down. The ones that get underneath the “I hate reading” to whatever is actually being said. And I posted them on Instagram, and it seems like I wasn’t the only one who needed ideas for this work.

So here, I put them together here as a free conferring tool, something you can print and keep in your folder for those moments when a child says the thing and you want to respond with more than a recommendation.

Download: When a Child Says They Hate Reading — What to Ask Next

It won’t fix everything. But it might start a different kind of conversation.

Reading, Reading Identity

Two Different Loses

Pernille Ripp

What we track. And what we miss.

I keep thinking about the ones who came to us loving books.

You know the ones. The kids who wanted to tell you everything about what they were reading, who recommended titles before you could recommend them first, who couldn’t walk past a shelf without stopping. Somewhere between then and now, they faded into the wallpaper. They still sit in our rooms. They still do the things we ask. But the books? The books stopped mattering to them. Or maybe they stopped believing the books were for them. And somewhere along the way, we stopped noticing that the energy we had poured into them as readers had quietly drained away.

That’s the loss I want to talk about. Not the child who never loved reading — we see that child, we have some ideas for that child. I’m talking about the reader we already had. The one we thought we didn’t need to worry about anymore.

We have systems for the child who stops reading.

Logs. Conferences. Check-ins. We notice when the pages stop turning and we intervene. That system exists because we built it, and mostly it works.

But there’s a second loss we almost never catch. The moment a child stops sharing their reading with us. Stops recommending. Stops bringing things to our desk. Stops starting conversations about books at all.

Those are not the same loss.

A child can still be reading every night and you can have no idea what their reading life actually looks like anymore. Because they stopped bringing it to you. And there was no system to catch that. No log for the conversation that didn’t happen. No conference protocol for the reader who went quiet.

We track whether they read. We don’t track whether they still want to bring it back to us.

And those are two different losses.

So why does it happen?

I don’t think it’s one moment. And I don’t think it’s about judgment, not usually. Most teachers I know aren’t dismissing the readers who go quiet. They’re just not getting to them. Because the curriculum needs covering. Because there’s an assessment coming. Because the things that get measured are the things that get time, and a quiet conversation about who a child is as a reader — what they’re choosing, what they’re abandoning, what they’re curious about — that conversation isn’t on anyone’s rubric.

And children notice.

Not in a conscious way. But they are always reading the room. And what the room tells them, slowly and consistently, is that their reading life — the one they own, the one they choose, the one that exists outside of any assignment — doesn’t need to be brought here anymore. Nobody is asking. Nobody has time. And so they stop thinking of themselves as people with a reading life worth talking about. They hand the agency back. Quietly. Without making a fuss.

And we let them. Because the system made it easy to let them.

That’s the loss I can’t stop thinking about. Not the reading. The sense of self that goes with it.

And yet. We are not helpless here.

The first one is simple. Go first. Tell a child about a book you abandoned. Not a book you loved — one you put down and walked away from. Tell them why. This does something important: it lowers the stakes entirely. It says reading is a relationship between a reader and a book, not a performance for an adult. And it makes the conversation mutual. You went first. Now it’s safer for them.

The second move is harder because it requires resisting a very natural instinct. When a child does start to share, don’t evaluate. No “did you understand it?” No comprehension check disguised as curiosity. Just: “What was it like for you?” That question has no wrong answer. It hands the agency straight back to them. And children who have learned to be guarded around reading conversations will slowly start to open up when they realize there’s no trap waiting.

The third move costs nothing. Find a book that genuinely makes you think of a specific child — not because it’s at their level, not because it would be good for them, but because something about it just reminds you of them. Leave it on their desk. A small note: “made me think of you.” No expectation. No follow-up. No asking if they read it.

Just the book. And the message that you saw them.

That’s sometimes enough to make a child remember that they are a reader. That someone noticed. That it still matters.

We cannot get those years back. The ones where they loved books and we were too busy to notice when that changed.

But we are here now. And so are they.

That’s enough to start.

Be the change, being me

One breath at a time

Pernille Ripp

I have the lung capacity of a 70-year-old.

Several years ago, I was diagnosed with a genetic deficit in my lungs and liver. One that can lead to emphysema, asthma, and a whole list of other things no one hopes to casually collect. It made sense. Walking up the stairs while talking would leave me breathless, still does. And yet, hearing that my lungs were not the way they were supposed to be was a quiet devastation. One more heavy thing to carry. A moment where my imagined ending shifted, where my future suddenly looked smaller, more fragile, than I had planned for.

And then we did what people tend to do.

We carried on living.

I noted how biking uphill became harder, how running became officially impossible (not that it was ever my thing), how nearly every cold turned into bronchitis or pneumonia, how exhaustion lingered long after the illness had passed. How my body kept whispering, something isn’t right, even when I was trying very hard not to listen.

And my fear grew. Because living beside your own mortality, really beside it, is exhausting. It’s scary. It makes you feel out of control.

A year ago, I realized I needed to change the trajectory. That I was living inside a self-fulfilling prophecy of decay. Because I knew biking would be hard, I didn’t bike. Because I knew exercise would leave me gasping for breath, it did, and once I was out of breath I stopped. I avoided the very things that might help because they confirmed everything I was afraid of.

But I also knew this: the constant current of stress, needed an outlet. And sugar wasn’t it. Alcohol wasn’t it. Tears weren’t it. Rage definitely wasn’t it.

A change had to come.

So I signed up for an introduction to CrossFit, bought actual trainers, and showed up — wildly out of my depth, unsure of what I was doing, and hoping no one would notice how hard breathing felt. I didn’t do it because I suddenly believed in myself. I did it because staying the same felt worse.

What followed wasn’t a transformation. It was resistance.

It was showing up fueled more by desperation and anger than motivation. It was loud, angry music. It was the fear of being the first to die in a zombie apocalypse. It was learning that I will never like running, or be good at it — and that this does not mean I can’t do it.

It didn’t come from a big training program. It came from small steps. From doing a little, resting, and then doing a little more. From learning that my pace is not a failure, but a necessity.

My pace. My way.

How much of change is exactly this?

Not the sweeping programs. Not the inspirational speeches. But lacing up your shoes (I promise this won’t turn into an exercise blog) and seeing how it goes.

So on January 1st, I made the goal that I wanted to be able to run one kilometer in a month. I turned to ChatGPT and asked it to create a plan. Its first suggestion was to warm up by running three kilometers.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about how familiar that felt.

How often do we ask for a small change and are handed an overhaul? A new program, new training, new language — when what we really needed was permission to start where we are. To try one thing. To begin without confidence, without mastery, without pretending this will be easy.

I see this all the time in education. We want to support children better, reach them sooner, help them regulate, belong, and learn. And so often, the answer becomes more: more systems, more steps, more expectations, more work for the adults — while the children wait for us to fix everything.

And then we wonder why we burn out.

Because the truth is, we cannot meet every child’s need. And that expectation, implicit or explicit, is impossible to carry alone. What we can do — what truly matters — is show up. Notice. Offer presence, consistency, and a small, safe step forward. For some children, just knowing that someone sees them, waits for them, or trusts them to make a choice is enough to shift something inside.

The children carrying so much anger, fear, grief, and overwhelm spill it into our shared spaces. They trust us enough to bring all of that mess into school — even when we cannot fix it.

This work rarely starts with big interventions. It starts with the smallest possible step. Not because it will fix everything, but because it might shift something, and because we, too, need to survive alongside them. And so we start small.

Letting a child decide when a check-in happens — now, later, or not today — and trusting that choice as information, not defiance.

Creating one predictable question that never changes, not to extract answers, but to signal safety: Do you want me close, or do you want space?

Making the exit plan visible before it’s needed, and then honoring it without commentary when it is used.

Lowering the academic demand in the moment without lowering the relationship — fewer words, shorter tasks, a pause instead of a push.

Offering literacy as regulation: a book already on the desk, a familiar text reread, writing without an audience, reading without assessment.

Naming what you notice without asking for repair: Something feels heavy today. I’m here when you’re ready.

Returning to the child later, always later, to restore, not resolve.

It is allowing yourself to not be perfect. To say good enough. To try, live with it, and then, when it becomes familiar, add another layer. It is resisting the urge to rush toward resolution and choosing presence instead.

This is slow work. It is unglamorous. It is deeply human.

And maybe that’s why we miss it while it’s happening. Because change rarely announces itself.

And like taking small steps with your own health or fitness, it is done one breath at a time.

Today, I ran 2.6 kilometers. That’s 1.6 miles for those of you in the U.S. A new personal record. Something I didn’t think I could do a year ago, and not even a week ago.

And maybe that’s the point. Change, for me, for a child, for a classroom, doesn’t announce itself.

It slips in quietly, one breath at a time.

So do we keep breathing? Or stop?

authentic learning, challenge

7 games to promote brave questioning

Pernille Ripp

When I first moved back to Denmark, I had the privilege of working in marketing—a completely different field from teaching, but somehow familiar. Everything was new: teams, assignments, routines. It was exhilarating, exhausting, and, unexpectedly, deeply thought-provoking when I considered my work as a teacher.

One of the first things I had to learn, fast, was how to ask questions. I knew very little, every day I was surrounded by people who knew far more than I did, even those fresh out of school. My gut and past experience were all I had to rely on. And so I asked questions—constantly. Not because I wanted to seem smart, but because I wanted to learn, to understand, to avoid assumptions that could lead me completely astray.

Even now, I ask a lot of questions. I would rather ask and realize I already know, than assume and be wrong. It’s a habit I try to bring into my classrooms every day.

We tell our students the same thing: ask questions, share your ideas, don’t be afraid. And yet, we also know it’s not easy. It’s hard to speak up when everyone else is silent. It’s hard to admit you don’t know something, especially when you’re unsure if your peers will be kind—or if they even care. And in a world dominated by AI answers, misinformation, and polarizing rhetoric, the courage to wonder, to experiment, and to be wrong can feel more vulnerable than ever.

This is why we continue to focus on questioning as a core part of learning. Not just the act of asking, but creating spaces where students feel safe enough to risk it. Where curiosity is valued above correctness. Where play and collaboration make questioning something natural, not intimidating. Because the ability to ask, to wonder, and to explore ideas is not just a classroom skill—it’s an essential part of growing up in a world that constantly challenges what we know and what we believe.

So how about a few ideas that do just that?

Curiosity is at the heart of all learning—and asking questions is the brave part of that. When we give students the space to wonder, to take risks, and to speak up, we’re teaching them far more than facts. We’re teaching them how to think, how to explore, and how to navigate a world that often values certainty over wonder.

As teachers, our job is to make that bravery feel possible. By using play, collaboration, and experimentation, we can help every child see that their questions matter, their ideas are valued, and their curiosity is worth showing—even when it feels scary. Because when students feel safe enough to wonder, that’s when real learning happens—and the joy of discovery follows them long after they leave the classroom.