There is a dangerous assumption out there that ‘leaders’ are chuck full of positive traits and on the side of the angels, but I’m here to tell you that it ain’t necessarily so. Just as leaders come in all shapes, colors and sizes they come with a wide variety of traits, not all of them positive. But it seems as if succession is tough all over.
Italian police have caught the Sicilian Mafia’s number two, the latest in a string of top-level arrests that has given the crime group that once terrified Italy problems with rebuilding its leadership.
The hero …read more

Are you aware of the new teaching approach in middle school English classes that gives kids a say in which books they read?
The approach is known as “reading workshop” and “…students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading…”
I sent the article to my niece, who alternates between teaching and being a school librarian. She started as a teacher, was driven out of it by internal politics and unreasonable parents, got a Master of Library Science and spent a few years as school librarian and is now back …read more

Long weekends often lead to interesting conversations as happened to me.
A long time reader and I were talking and he asked where I thought leadership belonged. He said he understood and agreed with my premise that claiming leadership was only for a select few and that selecting them when very young was both wrong and wasteful.
What use then were leadership skills? Did I believe that they, too, were worthless twaddle? Did I have anything useful to offer in their place?
I read back on what I’ve written and I realized that things I thought I’d made clear were more like mud.
I …read more