Category: Biography, Drama, History
By: Tonette Kellett on April 24, 2023
This week’s book was Factfulness written by Hans Rosling. It was an unusual read and I enjoyed it. The author puts forth ten instincts that we as human beings tend to hold as true problems in the world. Each instinct is dramatic and negative. Then he offers factual solutions for these problems. Thus the title…
By: Tonette Kellett on April 19, 2023
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk teaches the reader how to get through a traumatic past and the difficulties that result from that past. In reading this book, I noted four lessons that I would like to briefly discuss, and then…
By: Tonette Kellett on April 16, 2023
Daniel Nettle’s book Personality: What Makes You The Way You Are describes personality as something internal, stable, inherent to the person. [1] It is something which stands in a casual relationship to their specific choices, motivations, reactions and obstacles when faced with the stream of events. [2] Nettle explains that there is a five-factor model…
By: Tonette Kellett on March 19, 2023
Introduction This week’s book, Leadership: Theory and Practice by Peter Northouse presents different models of leadership. It is, as Dr. Jason Clark said in our zoom meeting last week, the foundational book on leadership for any student. Northouse’s definition of leadership is the “process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a…
By: Tonette Kellett on March 12, 2023
Sway is a book about biases, conscious and unconscious, but mostly unconscious biases. [1] The author, Pragya Agarwal, is a woman raised in India that later immigrated to the United Kingdom. [2] Being a woman intelligent in mathematics and sciences which is often considered a man’s realm, and also a woman of color, and a…
By: Tonette Kellett on March 6, 2023
In Reading Karl Polanyi’s book The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times, this past week I noted that the author wrote this book in the 1940s. He wrote of the free market system with no government intervention called laissez-faire that was first used in France in the 1800s. [1] He also talked…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on March 2, 2023
I discovered that my approach to completing the assignments this semester needed to change. The volume of reading, even done inspectionally, can easily become overwhelming. I realized in the first few weeks that I needed to make a shift. Making a shift from getting it done by the deadline to creating a meaningful experience that…
By: Tonette Kellett on February 26, 2023
In The Map that Changed the World we read about an engineer named William Smith that lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s. [1] He built canals and discovered many fossils along the way. In doing so, he found that the layers of rock beneath the surface of the earth rose and fell, and…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on February 23, 2023
WARNING! This post may not be for you! I share: 1. My Heart 2. My Authentic Space 3. My Introspective Thoughts (I met with my Coach an hour before writing it) So, govern yourself accordingly, there is no love lost between us if you skip over it without reading. For everyone else, I invite you…
By: Tonette Kellett on February 16, 2023
The book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber was a challenging read for me this week. It was necessary more than ever to go to videos and websites for help dissecting the material. I watched a professor give a talk on the topic from this title after reading most of…
By: Tonette Kellett on February 9, 2023
In Stephen King’s book On Writing, he pointed out that most people are able to write or tell a story to some degree. [1] He noted that their ability can be improved upon as well with practice. [2] As a teacher, I would say that this is certainly true of my students. Nearly all students…
By: Tonette Kellett on February 2, 2023
I was intrigued this week with the readings of Evangelicalism in Modern Britain [1] and Evangelicalism and Capitalism [2]. The readings cover a broad span of material that could potentially be written about in this post including the Bebbington Quadrilateral which is mentioned in both writings. The first book, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain had a…
By: Tonette Kellett on January 26, 2023
This book, Failure of Nerve, by Edwin Friedman, was compiled from writings ten years after the author had passed away. It was Friedman’s opinion in these writings that under pressure, most leaders will give in to the weakest member of the organization because of fear of retaliation. [1] Their giving in to these people causes…
By: Tonette Kellett on January 19, 2023
After reading Tom Camacho’s book, Mining for Gold, my mind is full of thoughts of coaching. While I ran track and cross country in school, and so know something of coaching from that standpoint, I know very little of coaching from the author’s point of view. Basically, God as a refiner, and transforms us until…
By: Tonette Kellett on January 12, 2023
Introduction In the book, The Molecule of More, the authors wrote about dopamine and its effect on different areas of our lives and on society as a whole. [1] According to WebMD, dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter made by our bodies. [2] Our nervous system uses dopamine to send messages between our nerve cells.…
By: Tonette Kellett on December 8, 2022
A resilient leader is “grounded, teachable, attuned, adaptable, and tenacious.” [1] This is according to Tempered Resilience written by Tod Bolsinger. In the book, the author uses the image of blacksmithing to represent the process of becoming a resilient leader. [2] He outlines the process in six steps. I will take a look at these…
By: Tonette Kellett on December 1, 2022
Shame Shelby Steele’s book, Shame, was a thought-provoking read this week. The story of the author’s personal journey during America’s tumultuous fight for Civil Rights in the 1960s and following was captivating. While I certainly agree with his father, who was the son of a man born into slavery, that we shouldn’t “underestimate America ……
By: Tonette Kellett on November 13, 2022
All Things Dolly Since childhood, I have loved all things Dolly Parton, and that includes her premiere vacation destination for tourists in East Tennessee – Dollywood. For those who have not been, it is a theme park set in the late 1800’s. There are rides (of course), delicious food to be tasted, and Dolly memorabilia…
By: Tonette Kellett on November 10, 2022
You Can Catch Alzheimer’s “You Can Catch Alzheimer’s” the headline reads. It goes on to explain it spreads during surgeries and blood transfusions, however, the headline is obviously misleading and disturbing. A questionable study was performed that led to this conclusion. One can only wonder if this is an anecdotal study [1], or about the…
By: Tonette Kellett on November 3, 2022
This week’s reading of Leading Out of Who You Are by Simon Walker underlines how vital trust is in leadership. If followers don’t trust their leaders, they simply will not continue to follow. [1] In thinking of this trust relationship, I am naturally put in mind of Native Americans. Recent research says that 66% of…
