A few years ago I made a big laminated sheet of the sort that teachers sometimes make. It's meant to help with setting expectations around speech. Sometimes these things are useful. Sometimes they aren't. Mostly they aren't, in my case, and I scrap them after a couple of weeks.
This one was of the other kind. It came with me in a taxi from my old school to my new school. If it falls off the wall then looking for a new piece of blue tack becomes an emergency. If I lost it I would be sad. My phone got nicked recently. I would rather they got my phone.
Sometimes people see me teach and they point at this bit of paper and go "that's good". I am not boasting, this happens. The keenest go "Can I have a copy?"
And I say yes. Always.
However, I then usually launch into a big rant about Vygotsky and Michael Sandel, and how Constructivism is a bosh and how I think the Polis functioned in Ancient Greece. See, I want them to see not just the resource but how it came to be, all the teachers and thinkers I have admired, all the students who have challenged me and saved me from dogma. They should, I always think, understand the journey to this point.
Nobody ever does.
See, they want the resource. Why not? It's a good resource. But it will only be mine in my classroom. They may use it better, they may use it worse, but what it means to me in my space surrounded by my expectations and hopes and failings and dreams is Me. It isn't a method I can ever communicate, not unless I can carry them back in time with me whilst putting them behind my eyes.
That's why whenever people talk about Direct Instruction or Group Working or Cognitive Acceleration I sit, I listen , I think, and I wait for them to get their USB out.
You see, I just want your resources. But I love what you do. Big fan of your work.
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