Ron’s #38: Switch by Chip and Dan Heath

I’m not too much into leadership books. I’ve read Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and How to Win Friends and Influence People a few years ago, so I’m good, right?

Mark read Switch and kept telling me stories from it. I liked the premise of how to get people to switch the way they are currently doing something into a better way. To simplify, this book is about getting people to do things you want them to do when they do not want to. (If Mark gave me this synopsis, I’d have thought it was a book on mentalism or hypnotics). This book is filled with story after story with how change occurs, whether in business, government, or education. As a teacher, I thought I could use a bit of help in motivating students to switch their current ways.

The brothers Chip and Dan Heath use the image of the Rider and an Elephant on a Path as the metaphor of the book. The Rider is our rational side and the Elephant represents our emotional side. Switch is about how to appeals to both to have the Rider guide the Elephant down a designated Path. While I didn’t always understand the distinction between the Rider and the Elephant, I gained a great deal of information and confidence in motivating others, especially in the classroom. Here are some “bright spots” that I learned that I will apply to my teaching:

Follow the Bright Spots: Find out what is working and highlight it. This application is clear for the classroom. Rather than focusing on negative behavior (as teachers are quicker to address), find those moments/behaviors when students are doing excellent work. Also, talk to other teachers to find what others do with a particular problem student (or problem issue such as apathy or low skills).

Script the Critical Moves: Instead of finding the big picture or a major goal, find a small behavior that will get the Rider moving. Rather than telling a non-writer to work on the essay, the critical move may be to write a six-sentence paragraph.  This is manageable.

Find the Feeling: Connect to the emotional side of people rather than merely the intellect. How can I address students so that they hear me with their guts? (Please forgive the mixed metaphor!).

Shrink the Change: This is similar to Scripting the Critical Moves, but it provides the feeling of success in smaller, bite-sized pieces. These small victories provide students with the confidence to move on to the next step. I remember a teacher I worked with at Turnaround School in Portland who would address an angry student yelling about not being able to do the math. Barb would bend down at eye-level and ask, “If you can’t do this, what can you do?” The kid will say that he can do three problems, and Barb would watch and praise. Her technique always stuck with me, even if I don’t always use it.

Tweak the Environment: The Heath boys state that behavior will change when we change the environment. What is the environment of my classroom? Is there something that is in the air that allows kids to give up or not try? Is there an expectation to pass the class? This is an area that I should ask a trusted colleague or even a few sharp students for feedback. There were a few excellent stories in the book about how teachers and principals altered the environment to make gains in student success.

I enjoyed this book, and I think you will as well, no matter your career. I think the authors did a fine job giving examples across a spectrum of careers, so there are stories in here for you. I hope that after I print off the Switch one-page overview (see http://www.switchthebook.com ) and post near my desk, I’ll be reminded how to help students who are currently resisting change.

And if the principles in this book do not work, I’m dusting off How to Win Friends and Influencing People and giving that a try!

Ron’s #37: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

After watching the movie version of High Fidelity this weekend for the umpteenth time, I decided to reread the book. I “read” the book via audio book ten years ago or so, and I loved it as much then as I did today. High Fidelity is an excellent novel about music, relationships, disconnection, and hope. The New Yorker raves that “It is rare that a book so hilarious is also so sharp about sex and manliness, memory and music.”

Rob Fleming is a 35-year-old music aficionado/snob. He owns Championship Vinyl, and works with Barry and Dick, paler versions of Rob with an equally prodigious knowledge of decades worth of pop music. The story begins with Rob’s girlfriend, Laura, moving out and leaving him to his records and snarky criticism. Rob drifts and floats his way through the next few weeks as he tries to find connections to something or someone, while facing his own emptiness that pop tunes cannot fill.

Rob, Barry, and Dick are consummate list-makers, creating the Top Five Songs for a Monday Morning, Top Five Songs about Death, and Top Five Artists that Must Be Killed When the Music Revolution Happens (U2 is on that list). They have better taste in music than most anyone else, and they are not shy about that fact. Rob says that he came to the conclusion that it is more important what you like than it is what you are like.

I’m not a music collector, but there is something to relate to in my book collecting that makes me really connect to this story. I feel that I can relate to the passion Rob show towards what seems to be meaningless and trivial stuff (band lineups, cover versions, imported singles). I like their everyday obsessiveness about records and music, and after reading it, I want to download some of the songs mentioned. (Sidenote: If I had time, I would create an iMix on iTunes of all the songs mentioned in this book.]

This is the fourth or fifth book of Nick Hornby’s that I’ve read, and I love his style and swag in dialogue. His prose would be a perfect example to show students the important of voice in writing, if it weren’t for all the swearing.

The movie version of this book is excellent as well. John Cusack is one of my favorites, and he captures Rob perfectly. Much of it, I like better than the book, mainly because they moved the location from London to Chicago. Stories just sound better in the U. S. of A. I didn’t understand many of the references, places, or phrases in the book, even with digesting the BBC version of The Office and Extras.

Coincidence: One of the main songs of the book is Solomon Burke’s “Got to Get You Off My Mind,” and Burke just died yesterday. I hope that it had nothing to do with my reading this book, although this wouldn’t be the first time this has happened.

Ron’s #36: The Tempest by William Shakespeare

I suppose that it’s about time that I posted a book by Shakespeare on my52books; I am an English teacher, after all. Unfortunately, I’m an English teacher that isn’t terribly crazy about ole Will. I’m not anti-Shakespeare, mind you…I’m just not that into him.

The Tempest is one of his tragicomedies that tells the story of an exiled Duke living on an almost deserted island with his 14-year-old daughter Miranda, his half-monster slave Caliban, and a male fairy named Ariel. Hijinks follow.

This is a tale of revenge, love, and forgiveness, as Prospero causes those who caused him harm in Milan to crash onto the island Lost-style. The prince of Naples falls in love with the 14-year-old (the first man she “e’er sighed for”), Caliban gets drunk and follows another, and the brother acknowledges his Cain-esque sin. Everything is made right at the end.

The Tempest is a good entry point to Shakespeare, much easier than some others. The story is supposedly based on a shipwreck in America in the 1600’s. Hear more about that here: http://www.shakespeareinamericanlife.org/audio/SeaVenture.mp3.

In the meantime, I’ll continue teaching this play to the sophomores in my classes. They seem to like it so far, even if there is no Jack Shepherd or a love triangle involving Kate.

Ron’s #35: The Consequences of Ideas by R.C. Sproul

I was eager to read and discuss this book for Apologia, our theological/philosophical book group at The Harbor. I first saw this book at an R.C. Sproul conference years ago, and it took me this long to getting around to reading it.

Mark gave a good overview of the book already here, so I’m not sure how much more I can add. It is an excellent primer on some of these important names in Western philosophy, and the Christian can get a sense of why these are vital concepts to know in the history of ideas. R.C. Sproul is a clear, engaging writer who can make the big ideas plain to the layman.

Like Mark mentioned, I too wished that Sproul commented more on the consequences of these ideas. This book was far too much of the ideas themselves—the names, movements, beliefs—and not enough on why these matter. I think that his teaching series on DVD goes into that more than the book does.

Even though R.C. is a noteworthy Christian thinker, I’m not sure that I would recommend this book first to someone interested in philosophy. I would point the Christian or non-Christian to one of my favorite works on these issues, Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. It’s one of the best books explaining the story of philosophy in a novel. It’s The Matrix meets your Philosophy 101 professor.

Ron’s #34: Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp

For me, reviewing a book on parenting is like reviewing a book on snowboarding. I know what a snowboard is, I understand the theory of how to snowboard, I have seen snowboarders (good and bad ones), and some of my best friends have snowboarded sometime in their lives. I, however, have no experience with a snowboard.

As Kristie and I move toward adoption, I thought that I should read a few books to begin thinking about parenting. Lots of friends like Shepherding a Child’s Heart, so it’s a good place to begin.  In a statement, the essence of this book is, “Help your child learn to honor and obey you as you honor and obey God.” Tedd Tripp shows that in this “circle of blessing” is where the child is richly blessed.

I liked that the main focus of this book is to place God at the center of your family. A child is not at the center of it. Unfortunately, we have several friends where the child is the center, and the parents cater to every whine and whim of the kid. It’s sad, as they don’t see it, almost blinded by their “love” for the child. The child has replaced God as the center. As a teacher, I see the end results of this when they grow to be teenagers. They are self-centered and selfish after growing up a steady diet of the junk food of parent-servants and self-esteem-for-nothing for 13-15 years. If you disagree with this, you have not spent much time around this type of spoiled teenager. Shepherding offers a different approach to this. Rather than placing the child at the center, guide the child to recognize that there is something more important than himself and even than his parents at the center: Jesus Christ. Teaching to obey and defer to another leads to a people who can see beyond the myopic scope of their own navels and banal desires. These children grow to be respectful and healthy adults, not grown-up babies who still whine and whimper until they get their own way.

Included in this reasoning is spanking. I’m still not sure if I agree or not, but I was interested to hear his reasoning. My biggest concern is not spanking in principle, but rather on his shaky mandate based upon a verse in Proverbs. It is hermeneutically unstable to base theology on a proverb, so I would need a little more direction on why this is important to Tripp’s message.

I appreciate the overview of parenting philosophy contained in this book, and I think that it started me off in the correct direction. Parenting ought to contain the Gospel as much as a sermon or a book. All spheres of our life should seek to proclaim the all-encompassing majesty of our God.

But, as I started off saying, what do I know about snowboarding?

Ron’s #33: The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

"Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony." (Chapter 17)

If I wanted to run my own fiefdom, this would be my handbook, one written by an Italian almost as famously ruthless as Vito Corlene. Currently, my 10^th grade students are reading excerpts from this, and I hope they enjoy/endure it. The essays can be pretty dry to our 21^st century lives; the text is mired in 16^th century historical records, making it difficult to understand at times.

Chapter 17 holds the juiciest parts, one that you should read for fun. This chapter contains the most famous line of the book, “Upon this a question arises” whether it be better to be loved than feared?...it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispossessed.”

As I read this, I kept imagining how recently political leaders would respond to Old Nick’s advice. How would George W. or Obama look if they followed some of his advice on how to treat citizens? I added an assignment with the reading that makes students write about advice to modern politicians. I’m eager to read what they create.

If I had some foresight, I would have ordered a book called A Child’s Machiavelli: A Primer on Power. The artist drew child’s pictures that apply Machiavelli politics to the elementary playground. Sounds fun!