Excellent literacy resources sell themselves

“When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.”

― Jason Fried, Rework

There were several boxes in the hallway addressed to me. What did I order? I thought. Looking more closely, I realized the boxes contained sample commercial resources from one of the big education companies.

Shortly after I emailed our representative. "As far as I know, I don't recall requesting these materials." They apologized for the mix up and set up a date to pick them up.

I am not adverse to commercially-developed literacy resources. If a product aligns with our beliefs and practices about reading and writing and it would take longer to develop something ourselves, then let's make the purchase. Our time is precious and our expertise is limited.

Yet it is interesting that I never receive sales calls from publishers and distributors of authentic texts and related resources. Maybe we will get a flyer or an email to build awareness about what they have to offer. But it is almost exclusively the case that we are reaching out to the publishers and distributors for the resources the students and staff want and need.

The decision to have the company pick up the preview materials was easy. It wasn't even a topic of discussion during today's leadership team meeting; our conversations were about future professional learning. We know where we stand regarding literacy resources.