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00:00:00 Molly Rauh
Hello and welcome back to the CCIRA literacy conversations podcast. I'm your host Molly Rauh with my co-host , Jessica Rickert.

00:00:09 Jessica Rickert
Today's podcast features Pernille Ripp. Pernille's work centers around creating a classroom environment based on student needs. Pernilleshares how important it is to keep students in the forefront of teaching and how to bring joy into the classroom and slow down to support students' learning . Welcome Pernille. We're so excited to have you on the podcast. Would you start out by telling us a little bit about yourself and your background?

00:00:39 Pernille Ripp
Sure. So my name is Pernille Ripp. And most days you can find me in seventh grade English and Oregon, Wisconsin, right outside of Madison, Wisconsin. Or of course, at home, with my own for kids, trying to navigate what it means to be a teacher and a parent during an ongoing Global pandemic. If I'm not teaching or with my own kids, I'm usually either reading or writing or speaking. We're running the Global Read Aloud, which kicked off this week. And so there's always lots to do and lots of crazy busy-ness. But I would say that I'm easily found, and I love usually wherever I'm at. And I just like to try to think about how we can change all the things that we see need to be changed, and what we can do within the frameworks that we work within, and how we can continually provide students opportunities to reclaim the power that so many of our systems have taken away from them, whether it's within their reading and writing instruction, but also just in like, how they get to be in our schools and the systems that we have set up for them thereA

00:01:49 Molly Rauh
Awesome. So my first question for you, Pernille, is just thinking about my own time and energy as a teacher. What was it that kick-started for you, like going beyond teaching in your classroom and starting to write professional development resources for teachers? And then where do you find the time and energy to do all the great things you do? Because the rest, the rest of us need to know.

00:02:20 Pernille Ripp
Yeah, I don't think there's such a thing as finding time, right? Like I think I make the time, and some days I feel super balanced and on top of the world and other days, I definitely don't. And I will say that the last 19 months. Now, with pandemic teaching, my world has been completely off kilter. I have not blocked as little as I have in all the years since I've been blogging. Even tonight. I sat outside for maybe 30 minutes, drinking a cup of tea, and just trying to read it. Book. And like my brain just could not connect with the words that I was seeing on the page. But I also say, like I have an incredible support system, right? I have a husband who is super invested in making sure that I have space to process, because that's how my writing started. It was a frustration with what I was doing, and then recognizing that some of the things that I was doing had been directly passed on to me in Traditions, right from helpful mentors and and college experiences. And also just what I had witnessed whatever was the traditions of teaching. And I was just really frustrated with how I had ended up becoming a product of the system that didn't work for all kids. And so I spoke a lot about it to my husband, and he's super, and he's a first-year teacher. He's really into education as well. But he was the one that said, you know, you really like writing, and he thought about writing about it. And so that's how it started. It started and continues to just be this, this kind of ongoing dialogue with the world, but also a monologue with myself with going. Okay, I saw this. And here are my thoughts. And here's what I'm going to try and hear what? Here's why this doesn't work. And so my blog is really just this, like random collection of experiences from the last 11 years, both in the classroom and also outside of it. And somehow that hit a chord with a lot of people. And it was not something that I set out to do. You know, it was not a diss intention of like man. I was a second. I was a third-year teacher when I started writing, and I did not think that I had the answers for anything, and I still don't have many answers, but I had a lot of questions. And I also had this hope that if I could change some things, maybe I could make the situation in front of me better. And my students were kind enough to share their voices with me and say, yeah, you go share this with other adults to, because it would be really nice if more people hurt at the new. And so I think that's it's just a super organic Journey that I've been on and continue to be on. Right. The learning never stops. And, and I think, especially in the last 19 months. Now more than ever, when we've just been told, we'll figure it out, or, you know, here's this new initiative. Can't you just make it work? I've tried to share all the dumb little things that I have done to try to make it bearable and manageable, but also been very vocal about like this is not sustainable, and it's not okay for us to feel like we're the ones failing here when there's so much more going on than just the decisions within our own classroom.

00:05:28 Molly Rauh
I love the that started as a reflective practice for you that you were just kind of reflecting on your work and writing about it. And, you know, I also think it's really neat that it was your husband who was like, write about it. You know, he recognized since what you needed when maybe you couldn't. So I think that's that's kind of a neat thing.

00:05:48 Pernille Ripp
And I think maybe he was just sick of hearing about it. You write like, because it's it's also like when you're in this vacuum together. Now that we were to teacher household, we also have to have like, we've really recognize some boundaries. And being like otherwise. It's all consuming. And I think he was at the point to where he was like this is all consuming for you. How can you get it out, step away? And then feel like you did something productive with all those thoughts? And so he knows me. Well, he knew that writing would be a good outlet for that.

00:06:16 Molly Rauh
And I think one of the beautiful things about that as starting this journey for yourself as a third-year teacher. I don't know to me, that's like the prime time. You still have lots of energy. You still, like you have questions about things. You have all these ideals that you haven't forgot, if that makes sense. Yeah, because I think I don't know about you, but as I go through my own teaching journey, sometimes you lose sight of like that, that ultimate goal of who you want to be. Because, like you said, those systems, they end up changing us. And sometimes you look around suddenly, and you're like, I don't want to be part of these systems anymore. And you said, like you said, they're part of traditions, and they get passed down. And I think we all slowly, over time, you know, become complicit complicit in some practices that we probably don't love.

00:07:13 Pernille Ripp
Absolutely. And I think they I think the system is set up to do that, that I think it's meant to wear as down the way that we are spoon fed this, you know, statement of, like, will do it for the kids. And the minute you raise your voice, well, then you're not in it for the right reasons. And what an incredibly toxic way of thinking. Like the reason I raise, my voice is for the kids, but it's also the create a profession that is sustainable for people, because it does not work if we're, if we are self sacrificing our health, our families, everything, our finances, just to fix a system that isn't working for kids, and then in Reverse being told, like, you must not have done enough. You know, when we look at burnout, it's like there's so many reasons. But of course, it's also like the burden that educational staff and the system is supposed to to carry is just too much. And so I think it's also, I think you're right with that, like I love being around new teachers because they're still hopeful. And then I look at myself, and I'm like, man, when did I become the jaded old teacher, right? Like when did I become that teacher? I was like, oh, here we go, another new idea, you know, like that voice in the staff meeting. But I get it now, And I get why people end up there. And so I think it's important to continue the dialogue with students to, because the students have been in our grade before. And so while I might be a eight year veteran of seventh grade by now, this is my students, one and only time in seventh grade, and they have hope and they want to change things. And so that's why I think it's so important for me to have those conversations with kids as well.

00:08:47 Molly Rauh
Okay. So, thinking of like going from that blogging piece to your first book, and and just to give you a little bit of heads up. So, you know, I like to poll some of my colleagues and friends in education before I do these interviews. And I would say, I there were there were two kinds of teachers. They either knew who you were, and there were like, oh, my gosh, that's so exciting. She's great, or they had no idea who you were. And so for the you know, I think on a literacy podcast, most of our listeners probably know who you are. But on the off chance that there are some who don't know much about you, I think like I want, I want you to go back to early as a professional writer. How did you go from the blog to a book? And then kind of quick summary of what your first book was about that our listeners can maybe go. Maybe I need to pick that up. Okay?

00:09:48 Pernille Ripp
Ya, no, how did that? So I was Brave. I saw a tweet. So I've been blogging for a couple of y