It’s been nearly a year since I wrote my last blog post. There are lots of reasons why it’s taken me this long. First was long service leave and I was travelling, but then I returned home and my mum passed away soon after. I have thought about writing occasionally since then and an idea or subject starts to form as I go for a walk or exercise at the gym, but by the time I get back to my laptop the motivation is lost. After a big year last year, I’ve been feeling that I don’t have much new to offer and that so many others are doing it better. This has been a ‘consolidation’ year. I’ve spent a lot of time writing new iTunes U courses and materials, incorporating differentiation, SAMR and some of the important research from Jo Boaler, including embedding Number Talks, to the best of my ability. I guess the fact that some of these courses have a lot (by my standards) of extra subscribers (beyond the students in my own school who have to subscribe!) suggests I am doing something right. 

I’ve been questioning my leadership capacity and my ability to bring others on board. There is some progress, but it has been slow. I think maybe, however, the momentum is starting to build. I have had teachers who willingly proof read my courses,  but now I have one who is a co-contibutor and another looking to use iBooks Author to create some support material for her students. Three teachers are doing Jo Boaler’s How to Learn Maths course with their classes and two are doing the teacher version, which I, together with two others, completed last year.

When I started to write this post 3 weeks ago, it was much less positive, but then a timely tweet from @markliddell with a link to a blog post by Peter Green, titled The Hard Part, gave me some much needed perspective. Teaching is hard, leading teachers is hard, there is never enough (time, energy, resources), I will never be the perfect teacher, there is always more I can do. But what we do is important and while I am still striving to improve and to do what’s best for the students, even now after teaching for nearly 33 years, then it’s OK.  Maybe it’s not time to retire yet.