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.

He tells me he is bored. As if that is the only reason I need in order to understand why being part of the learning is not the priority. An honest answer, but also one wrapped up in so many questions. What does boredom mean to you? I hear myself say that this is school, it cannot compete with a screen and it was never meant to.

I have 43 school days left and I can already feel it. That quiet guilt that starts sneaking in sometime around May. The one that whispers I did not do enough this year. That the readers in my care will walk out that door in June and the reading lives we built together will quietly unravel over the summer and somehow that will be on me.

We talk about reading as if it is in a race. As if every time a kid picks up a phone instead of a book, reading has lost a point. And I understand why we frame it that way. The competition feels real. YouTube, social media, every platform built around the endless scroll, they are extraordinary at what they do. The additives of a phone and everything that comes with it, the brain chemistry they tap into, the way they are engineered to keep you coming back, it's a losing race, we cannot compete with that.

All year I have been working with this one child. A good reader. Bright. Funny. And yet he hates reading. Tells me there are no good books despite me bringing all my tricks. Book recommendations, book excitement, cheerleading and all of that. And then I realized something. It's an ingrained habit now. A quick dismissal. Because if there are no good books then the work stops.

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.

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.

We have been studying genres in 3rd grade. Something so simple, and yet such a powerful key to unlocking yourself as a reader. For some students, these classifications are crystal clear; they already have the language that wraps around them as readers. For others, the designations are murky at best—confusion between fiction and nonfiction (which I completely understand in this day and age), and even what it means for something to…

This week, I was invited to sit down with with Dr. Sarah Sansbury, Leah Gregory, and Janette Derucki for the Can’t Shelve This podcast (releasing February 10th). The invitation was simple: come talk about reading culture. About what we actually do in our classrooms and schools that either invites children into reading or quietly pushes them away. That kind of conversation is my favorite.

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.

I'm on my second cup of tea of the day. Waiting for my husband to come home so I can head out into the world with our youngest, giftcards burning a hole in her pocket. We woke up in the dark, but knowing that we gained 5 minutes of sunlight already. We lumbered into awakeness through pages read, quiet conversation, and a plan for this second to last day of the year.

It has been ages since I have written here. Not created content, not shared ideas, but simply written in the ways that I have been writing for so many years. A familiar refrain, a coat that fits just so, but left forgotten in a closet because who has time to take it out? It seems I moved to Denmark and forgot parts of myself.

Next week, in my 3rd grade Danish class, we’re starting something new — or maybe something old, just done differently. We’re bringing the Thinking Classroom to our literacy work. I have seen the excitement from it in math, which made me wonder; how can we model the same concept but within ELA (or DLA in my case 😊). So in true Pernille fashion, I asked if anyone was interested in seeing the slides with prompts I had made in either Danish or English, and it turned out that, yes!

In these continued times of turmoil I have looked to the past and the present for hope. I don’t think I am the only one. When the world around us seems to lose its way, we look back upon othe…

I'm a doodler. Facing long meetings or tasks where I need to intently listen, I instinctively reach for something to draw on—not as a means of escape, but as a way to focus. I know I am not the only one. Doodling, when done mindfully, has been shown to boost attention and cognitive processes. It helps in information retention, reduces mind-wandering, and provides a creative outlet that promotes stress reduction.

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.

I go back to work tomorrow. A month off with big plans of all the things I was going to do, and so many things I didn't. I didn't plan really. I didn't read PD books, or watch webinars, or delve into education shorts. I have not stressed, mostly. Instead I have read, I have cooked, I have gardened, I have explored, I have napped - so many glorious naps.

How many times have we heard a child say, “I’m not good at reading”?Or watched one put a book back on the shelf, saying, “This is too hard for me,” even though we suspected that they could read it — if only they would give it a shot? Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what stops kids from fully stepping into their reader identity.

I had my first back-to-school nightmare yesterday. Woke up feeling unprepared, heart in my throat, and all sorts of nervous. It was nothing special, the standard one where everything starts off smooth, and then all of a sudden everything falls apart. I am unprepared, lost, and being evaluated. I woke up in high alert, what do I need to do…

In my Patreon community, a fellow educator recently reached out with a growing concern: their district has mandated the exclusive use of Lexile-leveled texts in English classes. That’s right—only texts that align with students’ grade-level Lexile scores are now considered acceptable. The frustration in their message was tangible. Texts that students love, that have sparked rich discussions, and that they’ve built curriculum around are now off-limits because they don’t “fit” the approved band.

An oldie but a goodie as many start to slide into summerbreak. Here in Denmark we go all the way until the end of June, with "just" a month off, before we head back in August. Perhaps like me, you need to find a way to stop the teacher thought train? As an educator in the US, it normally took me weeks to finally relax at the end of the year.

One of my driving questions for the past 15 years has been a simple one; at the end of the day, would I like being a student in my own classroom? And as I have one month left of school, I feel the question pressing in on me as I think of next year and both the joy of continuing with my current class, as well as becoming the classroom teacher for a different class.

Last week, I was surprised to be asked to speak at another Danish school about the joy of reading to their 4th-9th grade students. Surprised because I am not really anyone who is invited to anything here in Denmark. And also; when was thelast time I went out to speak to students that weren't my own? At first, I was pumped.

My favorite reads so far 2025 is shaping up to be another incredible year in children’s book publishing. Wondering which books have me excited? Browse them right here. Favorite picture books …