Book List: Leadership and Education
I’m finally beginning to put together some thoughts on the project I first started thinking about here. In terms of projects, I’m curious to see what the common themes are in the various leadership, organisational structure, internal comms books I’ve read are. It’s by no means academically rigorous – more just for me to feel...
Not really very Phoenix-like
It’s a pain when the people you’ve registered your domain name with stop trading. I’ve lost access to the name monkeymagic.net and so am having to port things across. WordPress has changed a little since the registrars went down so the back-ups half work but not completely. Tags and categories still need some playing...
Wayfinders, Navigation and Progress
Wayfinders are extraordinary – highly trained, technology free and remarkably successful navigators. I’ve been wondering quite a bit recently about data, measuring progress and all that sort of thing, especially given complexity, and these Polynesian navigators provide some rich lessons, I think. They’re not operating...
Making better use of Kindle Highlights 2
Getting your Kindle Highlights from Readwise to Roam isn’t hard but getting them in the way you want them takes some playing around. Step 1: Connect Once you’ve logged in to your Readwise Dashboard, you need to connect Roam as a service. There’s a good step by step tutorial here but the short version is: […]
Making better use of Kindle Highlights 1
I love how easy it is to store highlights on Kindle. Swipe and that’s it. But I hate how hard it is to then do something meaningful with those highlights. Getting them “out of Amazon” is a pig, and I wonder sometimes if I should just go back to my old ways – dog ear […]
Books on Leadership for Teachers
Leadership is difficult, I think. Part of the problem is that those who believe they are good at it aren’t, and those who are reluctant to be involved are the very ones you want leading. There are a number of teaching-specific leadership books, but I tend to prefer a broader palette. The below are books […]
Snippets from Black Teacher
I cannot begin to do this book justice, nor will these snippets. so I’d really highly recommend reading Beryl Gilroy’s wonderful memoir in full. Of Lady Anne: “I could never really grasp how sincere she was in anything she said. She was able to laugh or cry inside without moving a single muscle in her […]
Snippets from The Old Boys
Really enjoyed William Trevor’s The Old Boys. “As the future narrows one turns too much towards the past. One sees it out of proportion, as though it matters.” “Mr Nox was not lonely … but he had faced loneliness as a boy and come to terms with it. It was like getting over measles, knowing […]
The Jaffa Cake Fitness Plan – Efficiency vs Effectiveness
I wonder if sometimes looking for the most efficient solution might actively damage our chances of finding the most effective solution. Let’s take an example “fitness drive”. Being lazy, I’ll usually want to do this in the most efficient way, so I’ll lie on the sofa, ploughing through the internet, clicking,...
Walking The Canterbury Tales: The Pilgrims Way
For my “lockdown holiday” I thought I’d walk the route of the Canterbury Tales. I assumed, wrongly, that there would be loads about it online. There isn’t. There are some great resources, but it took me longer than I’d thought to find a GPX map for my phone so this is a quick tying together […]