Mike Matthews

My thoughts after 62 years on this planet on family, public education, cooking, and life.


LATEST POST

I’m Not a Very Good Sports Fan

I guess I’m not a very good sports fan. I was not one of the two million fans screaming and cheering on the streets of LA as the Dodger World Series victory parade drove through town yesterday. I was not part of the packed Dodger Stadium that gave a thundering welcome to the Dodgers at […]

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Mentoring and Supporting Leaders

October 19, 2024

I have spent over thirty years in educational leadership roles. I enjoyed so many aspects of all of my jobs. I loved the hard work, strategic planning, supporting teachers and staff, communicating with parents and garnering their support, developing collegial relationships, and so much more. And the longer that I worked in leadership positions, the […]


Routines: The Foundation of Our Lives

October 5, 2024

One of the greatest aspects of retirement is that, for the most part, I don’t really have to do anything that I don’t want to do. I don’t have to go to work. I don’t have to write these blog posts. No one is telling me how to spend my days. I can wake up […]


Threats to Any School Impact All of Us

September 21, 2024

Public schools have been around for over 350 years in the United States. But over the last 25 years, since Columbine thrust school shootings into our national consciousness, school employees have had to deal with a whole new set of stresses that their predecessors never imagined. Between the too-frequent active shooter incidents in our schools […]




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BOOKSHELF

Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Smart, Sexy, and Fit – Until You’re 80 and Beyond


Read: 2022
Non-Fiction, Reading Now

Younger Next Year is a book I keep coming back to. I forget who first turned me on to it, but I read it in my mid-fifties, and it continues to inspire me.  The bottom line is that at some point, sometime in our forties or fifties, our bodies want to get old and decay. […]

The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues

Patrick M. Lencione 2016
Read: 2024
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now

One of my favorite parts of my career in public education is the teams that I have been fortunate to be a part of. I wrote a post on my love of teams back in 2020, celebrating teams that included: History classes that I taught New teachers (and eventually veteran ones too) at San Lorenzo […]

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again

Johann Hari 2022
Read: 2023
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now

My friend Jenn loaned me this book. That means I read it as a paperback, instead of Kindle-ing it. I read less than 10% of my books in hard copy. This was a perfect one to choose to be part of that 10%. This is a book about why we are distracted, and the forces […]

Make Your Bed: Little Things that Can Change Your Life … and Maybe the World

Admiral William H. McRaven 2017
Read: 2021
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now

I’ll get to the title of the book later. This is written about the trials and travails of life. It’s about how life can kick you in the teeth, whether or not you deserve it. He writes about Naval SEAL training and the strength you need to get through that. SEAL training prepares our young […]


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