Mike Matthews

This is a book that has been on the best-seller list for a while, and I saw it in a friend’s house that I was visiting for a few days,   […]   View Post →

Manhattan Beach belongs to Consortium 2034, a group of school districts from across the country who work to better serve the needs of our similar communities. One of our regular   […]   View Post →

Somehow I missed this when it came out. I am a fan of this genre and this book was a true though provoker. I only climbed from under my rock   […]   View Post →

We are doing a lot of work on teacher evaluation in MBUSD, and Charlotte Danielson is regarded as one of the foremost experts on the subject. I worked with her   […]   View Post →

This year I shadowed one of our junior students at Mira Costa High School. Click here to read my blog entry. One of our big topics here is trying to   […]   View Post →

This book was recommended to me by a Mira Costa graduate who is now a college sophomore. It is a damning report on the level of instruction at the college   […]   View Post →

I reread this book after Ray Bradbury died. It was my way of paying homage to a great thinker. I was struck by his prediction of reality TV, something that   […]   View Post →

It’s been years since I read Pillars of the Earth, but I remember loving it. Follett has published two books recently: Fall of Giants, a WWI book, and Winter of   […]   View Post →

It’s always nice to gain insight on people you already know from a book that they write and publish. Chris and Jen Fenton live right here in Manhattan Beach, and   […]   View Post →

I read this book as I prepared for our trip to Cambodia in December of 2017. I had been trying to get our family to go to Cambodia for three   […]   View Post →

Martin Seligman is on a mission to change the very nature of psychology. While he looks at drugs and Freudian psychology as techniques that can at least mask and perhaps   […]   View Post →

I love this book. Love it. Mike Schmoker, a long advocate of using data to guide instruction, brings so many of his ideas together here. He has written a simple and   […]   View Post →

Some of you who know me know that I love to cook, and I love to barbecue on my Big Green Egg. Whenever I go to any place in the   […]   View Post →

I read this book in preparation for the fall 2019 meeting of Consortium 2032, our group of seven school districts who work together towards continuous improvement. Mr. Kraemer is a   […]   View Post →

In the 2015-16 school year, we made our first foray into bringing mindfulness into our classrooms. We trained all of our elementary teachers in the MindUp program.  This program is   […]   View Post →

When I started teaching at age 22, with just two large classes in a high powered high school, I had great ideas. About 10% of my great ideas turned out   […]   View Post →

This is a book I read when our English department wanted to make it one of our summer reading options for juniors and seniors. Our English department takes very modern   […]   View Post →

I started playing golf when my older son was seven years old. He wanted to play so I started playing with him. He was beating me by the time he   […]   View Post →

Here’s another golf book that deals very little with technique. Nothing about backswing, follow-through, speed of the swing or any of those things. It is just about mindset, focus, and   […]   View Post →

I bought this book because I loved Roland Merullo’s Breakfast with Buddha, and I love golf. Not nearly as impactful as the Breakfast book, but light and enjoyable. The idea of deities caring   […]   View Post →

Grit is the story about how we often are quick to praise students for their natural ability. We don’t as often praise students for the hard work that it takes   […]   View Post →

, by  (2016) This is a New York Times Bestseller book about a lawyer in San Francisco who grew up in the hillbilly lifestyle in the Appalachian Mountains. My dad   […]   View Post →

Kind of a Catch 22 for Science Fiction. This is a book I’ve heard much about, but I’ve never read. The author is crazy, and I thought it highly entertaining and   […]   View Post →

by Ted Sizer (1984 & 1992) These are books that came out in 1984, as I was beginning my teacher preparation master’s program, and 1992, as I was entering my   […]   View Post →