Keep or dump?

Blog108:

Turning over a page in one’s career is not a picnic; from a thirty-seven year career perspective, it is particularly challenging to imagine and actually deal with a wealth of meaningful resources.  After all, the collected resources required hours of research, planning, implementation and reflection.  What now?  What’s to be done besides hauling all to a recycling bin or a dumpster?

“Hold on those reins, just yet!” I hear a voice from within.

I begin the ordeal.  I rummage through reserved … kept binders, and folders of information and resources.  For a good while, I get lost and deeply immerse myself in thumbing through and sorting.  In the process, I begin reflecting, “Why should I keep any, some or all resources in my midst?

To aspiring mind-shapers and molders, sharing resources that I actually found helpful, enriching, tried and tested in my personal teaching-learning path would be a good reason to not just throw them away.   It would be wasteful to simply rid of something still relevant, valuable, and representative of best practices.  Modeling the uses of such useful resources to those without much experience or are beginning teachers would carry significant meaning and goodwill.  Perhaps … just perhaps, the audience and recipients would find new ways to develop something new from models?  Or simply, they could also serve as library references.    

Our ‘throw-away mindset’ is sometimes an easy way to rid of things front and center because they consume our mind or space.  A little intentional reflection and problem-solving do pay off.  From something to nothing … from nothing to something … we can always find random, yet purposeful directions for everything!