In response to a post by Brian Bennett: http://www.brianbennett.org/blog/bunching-vs-wrapping/
I wrote:
Thinking of teaching as a tapestry is a great imagery. You take different threads and bring them together, some here for one part of the design, others disappear for awhile but show up in another object or piece of the tapestry later. The kids may not see the design while you’re weaving (though they like it better if you take time to show them periodically), but once they’re out of your class, they can look back and be amazed at what they’ve learned and how it all came together. What looked like tangential comments or “off-topic classes” turn out, in retrospect, to be part of a great design. Their own ideas, that you didn’t plan for at all, can be woven into that design making a different tapestry for every class, even different sections of the same “course.”
I like the image of weaving for many reasons, not the least that a good weaver can incorporate “outside” threads to enrich a picture s/he didn’t originally plan to have them.