3rd Edition
Passionate Learners How to Engage and Empower Your Students
Would you want to be a student in your own classroom? In this bestselling book, Pernille Ripp invites both novice and seasoned teachers to co-create a positive, interactive learning environment with students.
Based on honest reflections on her own teaching experience, Pernille offers a wide variety of ideas for sharing control, developing your intuition, learning how to fail, giving yourself grace, building community and trust, creating more choice, allowing time for student expertise, and letting go of the punish, behave, and reward cycle so that intrinsic motivation can thrive. This fully enhanced new edition is chock full of additional strategies and tools on topics such as centering students’ identities, overcoming barriers when creating student-centered lessons to emphasize ownership of the learning cycle, shoring up your boundaries to manage your time and stop the intense prep work, changing your homework habits to reduce your load and give students more time, deemphasizing grades, and much more.
With Pernille’s heartfelt stories and practical strategies, you’ll feel inspired to give your classroom back to your students and foster a community of truly passionate learners!
Foreword About the Author Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Rediscovering the Teacher You Set Out to Be: Taking the Steps to Change 2. Would You Like Being a Student in Your Own Classroom? Creating Conditions for Shared Power 3. Shoring Up Boundaries: Protecting Your Time and Yourself 4. It’s Not How Your Classroom Looks: Creating Classroom Spaces Where All Children Can Thrive 5. Cultivating a Passionate Learning Environment: Ways to Build Community and Trust 6. Giving the Classroom Back: Getting Started with Student-Centered Learning and Overcoming Barriers 7. Letting Go of the Punish, Behave, Reward Cycle: Building Conditions for Better Intrinsic Motivation 8. Centering Standards and Identities: Planning Units and Lessons that Center Children 9. Free to Have a Life: Changing Your Homework and Worksheet Routine 10. Grading Destroys Curiosity: Moving to Authentic Assessments 11. Final Thoughts: Making the Changes that Matter
Biography
Since Pernille Ripp was a child growing up in Denmark, she knew she wanted to work with kids. She has loved being a fourth, fifth, and then seventh grade teacher in the American public school system, as well as an educational coach for adults. In her co-created teaching spaces, students’ identities are at the center of the explorations that they do, as is considering how to fight for change. Recently, Pernille moved home to Denmark, where she is expanding her knowledge of children’s development and needs through her work in early childhood education.
Hear from Pernille's students what it means to co-create empowering learning environments
"Being a student in Mrs. Ripp’s class was different from being in other classrooms because of the way we were invited to have a say in what we were learning. Because I was invested in what I was learning, I was motivated to engage in learning."—Meghan
"The classroom experience felt amazing for me. Other teachers should teach this way because it has a good, huge impact on the student and makes them mentally, emotionally, and physically feel more safe and comfortable in the classroom."—Madi
"Mrs. Ripp … showed me that teachers don’t have to teach to see good grades and right answers. They can teach to inspire, to allow creativity, to foster individual ability and achievement within that, to allow choice with learning, and to foster a love for learning within every student." —Alyssa
"I was always given space to improve and grow in the classroom."—Adam
"Mrs. Ripp’s classroom always felt like a safe space for everyone. She was strict on our work but understood our personal stories as well. Mrs. Ripp set a great example for a balance of strictness in schoolwork, and understanding how we act as middle schoolers and our abilities."—Morgan
