I was sitting cross-legged on the carpet with a small tray of Base 10 blocks in front of me.

It could have been 10 minutes or an hour. Either way, time just disappeared.

With a friend, we were building towers, exchanging ones for tens, tens for hundreds — making sense of a whole new number world.

And we were learning. Really learning.

We discovered how numbers fit together — how ten tiny cubes could transform into a rod. How stacking ten rods built a flat. How to break apart a big number into manageable chunks. How place value wasn’t just a word but something we could see and touch.

For some reason, this early maths memory (from just a few years ago 😉) has stayed crystal clear.

There’s so much from my schooling that’s faded away. But not this.

It could have stuck because the activity connected with my love of building and problem-solving.

Maybe it stayed because the challenge was just right — hard enough to be exciting but never too much.

It turns out Mr Patel had a real gift — a way of making learning feel like discovery.

He helped us believe we could tackle real maths — not just worksheets — and actually enjoy it.

Fast forward to today…

A lot of what we hear about “impact” and “good teaching” focuses on things like:

• Test scores
• School rankings
• University acceptances

These are important. But they’re just one piece of the puzzle.

Impact also unfolds across a lifetime. It’s often invisible to the teacher who sparked it.

Impact is knowledge and skills, yes. But it’s also confidence, perseverance, and a sense of joy in learning.

(Without those, life-long learning doesn’t stand a chance.)

Impact is: the memories your students will carry with them long after the tests are forgotten.

Your impact: understanding, skills, self-belief, jobs, motivation, smiles, curiosity, exam results, scholarships, belonging, and so much more.

We never really know the full extent of the impact we’ll have.

But we can keep trying.

Keep reflecting.

Keep choosing what’s best for the students right in front of us.

And trust that somewhere down the road, it’ll matter.