Our research is part of the ReVEA project (Bruillard, 2019), which focuses on French secondary teachers use of resources. In the French educational system, teaching content is framed by the national curriculum, which allows teachers a great deal of “pedagogical freedom” in its implementation. Between the prescribed and produced curriculum, textbooks are a good example of the “potential curriculum” developed by Martinand (2003). Following to this model, in which “teaching practices and teaching quality emerge from the complex interactions between resources, teachers and schools”, (Horsley, 2013), this contribution questions the relationship between physics and chemistry teachers and textbooks in high school. We have observed that teachers spontaneously declare that they do not use, or use very little, their textbook with students. However, teaching teams continue to choose new textbooks with each reform and either families or regions invest a significant budget to provide each student with a textbook by school subject. To study the place of textbooks and their use in articulation with other resources, ideally, we should observe teachers’ activity with resources at any time, which is mostly outside the school. However, as this is not easy to access, we have collected hybrid data, using semi-directive interviews with eight teachers and some classroom observations. Our interview grid concerns in particular: - Textbook selection modes: what are the conditions under which schools make their selection (When does it take place? Who is involved in the choice? Who are the people or criteria that influence it?); - Teachers' evaluation of the student textbook and other textbooks available for the particular level; - Declared use of textbooks: in what ways are teachers using them when they prepare the sessions or propose activities to their students? - Motivations reported by teachers, which guide their work with resources. Classroom observations let us see other selected resources, regardless of their nature and format (like software or material things), and their actual use by teachers or students during the class. Data analyses rely on activity theory (Leontiev, 1984), and lead us to draw teachers’ portraits which, through the motivations teachers express to explain their choice, shed light on the diversity of the activities declared with these traditional resources and testify to the importance of the personal relationship each teacher maintains with his or her own set of resources. The results first highlight a high autonomy of teachers regarding the student textbook. There is an absence of declared use by students themselves, except for some selected exercises either at home or at school. But if they use various textbooks according to their preferences and level of confidence, teachers never stick strictly to the student textbook or any given textbook. Their choice may be linked to their training or their collective practices. Sometimes, they keep all their old textbooks and build collections. However, there appears to be a paradox: regarding students’ activities, teachers who claim to maintain a distance from the resources proposed in textbooks use other online resources that are sometimes very similar in terms of student tasks or learning situations