Leading Intentionally, Teaching Deliberately
Originally posted on Education Scotland's PLL blog On finishing reading Matt Haig’s “ The Midnight Library ” as part of a staff book club, I re-read Walden . It features heavily in Haig’s bestseller and I was keen to remind myself of why I had adored it as a student , and why so many people continue to list it in their Top 10 books. It didn’t take long to remember why it was so universally appealing. Despite being 170 years old, the messages are as pertinent today as they were when Thoreau sat by the lake in his cabin writing it. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854 ) I have written previously on this blog about the never-ending plate spinning that we, as educators and school leaders, must undertake. Thoreau, then, describes precisely what we all dream of: the stripping ba