Oh, duh.. it's in your controller, not your model.. that's why $this->class didn't work!
If by re-ordering you're talking about the drag-and-drop, that has to be done with a global view of your records, without pagination. I haven't figured out any other way to do it. Think about it -- you need to send a serialized list of the objects to the controller. If some are missing, how can you get an accurate sort? If you replace the 3rd one in the list, for instance, what about the 3rd one on the list when the records are not filtered?
If resources could only be viewed in a category, it would make sense, but since there is a global view of resources, unfortunately, sorting has to take place on that global view.
Although.. I'm open to ideas.