So I had been plowing a fairly lonely furrow as a classroom teacher. I had taken bits and pieces from various books and twitter chats and started to redesign how I organised the learning in my classroom. Most of what I was changing was giving much more control and choice to the students. But I felt vulnerable to accusations of experimenting without evidence that what I was trying would have a positive impact on the students’ learning. I knew it was working, and I knew I was on the right track. But I struggled to articulate this convincingly to those people who would ask about what I was doing.
Then came my validation and then some. From my PLN I kept hearing about this Pirate Book. Not the teach one, I’d been put off that by the ‘theory without real life application’ reviews. But the ‘Learn Like A Pirate’ book. It was a revelation. The confidence it gave me inspired me to continue exploring what I was attempting. It also encouraged me to take it much further with the practical suggestions really supercharging the changes I made and the experiences my students had in class. I write about it in more detail here.