MattPerman.com

Teaching as Leadership

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I saw this recommended by Dan Heath and ordered it. The full title is: Teaching As Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher’s Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap

What Makes a Good Teacher?

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Dan Heath gives some reflections on a recent article in the Atlantic which he highly recommends. He notes: For years, people have speculated about what makes a great teacher. But now there is data. It has been gathered painstakingly by Teach For America for over a decade, and it covers hundreds of thousands of kids. TFA […]

Controlling Medical Costs by Knowing the Purpose of a Hospital

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On Friday we discussed Rudy Giulian’s point that leadership involves applying a well-thought-out set of beliefs to the real world. Then we gave education as one example. Health care is another good example that Giuliani gives, also from his book Leadership: I practiced the same discipline in examining the purpose of New York City’s hospitals […]

Educating Students or Protecting Jobs?

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After discussing how the job of leadership entails applying beliefs to real-world situations, Giuliani gives the New York City school system as an example of how this works out: The New York City school system was never really going to improve until its purpose, its core mission, was made clear. What the system should have […]

Applying Strengths to Parenting and Education

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The underlying philosophy in most of the school systems I’ve encountered (growing up and as a parent, with one notable exception) seems to be based on the assumption that a student’s greatest opportunities for growth are in his areas of weakness. Obviously students do need to develop their skills in areas where they don’t demonstrate […]

The Biggest Sin in Your Church

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A recent post by Ed Stetzer. Here are two paragraphs from it: If I preach about gay marriage, everybody cheers. If I preach about sin you can hear the amens ring. But those aren’t the real problems. I tell people that the biggest sin in our church is you sitting there doing nothing and still […]

Life After Death: The Evidence

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Dinesh D’Souza’s new book Life After Death: The Evidence is out. Sean McDowell reviews the book in a recent post. Here are the first two paragraphs of his review: Is death the end, or is there something more? Does life continue after the grave? According to Dinesh D’Souza, in his new book Life After Death: […]

Systems Trump Mission Statements; Culture Trumps Systems

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A few months ago I blogged on how systems trump intentions because systems create behaviors. In discussing the attempted Christmas bombing plot, Dave Logan makes the good case that the reality goes one step further: culture trumps systems. Hence, no amount of systemic change will ultimately solve the problems that led to the security breach […]