Blog Archives
God Is Good: Simply the Gospel of Jesus Christ
God Is Good: Simply the Gospel of Jesus Christ by Ivon Hartness is a heartfelt, chapter-by-chapter walk through the Gospel of Matthew, written as both a teaching guide and a personal testimony. Hartness begins with Jesus’ genealogy and birth, lingers over Joseph’s quiet righteousness, follows the wise men, John the Baptist, the Sermon on the Mount, the temptations in the wilderness, the parables, the cross, and finally the resurrection and Great Commission. The book’s central conviction is steady and unmistakable: God is good, Jesus is the promised Savior, and the Gospel is not merely information to study but truth meant to remake the heart.
What moved me most was the book’s sincerity. Hartness writes like someone who isn’t trying to impress a classroom but to sit beside a reader with an open Bible between them. I felt that especially in the early chapters, when Joseph’s choice to protect Mary becomes more than a familiar Christmas detail. It becomes a picture of restraint, mercy, and obedience under pressure. The same warmth appears in the discussion of the wise men, where Hartness gently corrects popular nativity assumptions without sounding smug, and in the resurrection chapter, where the stone rolled away is treated not as a theatrical flourish but as an invitation to look inside the empty tomb. That kind of devotional imagination gives the book its pulse.
Hartness is passionate, direct, and deeply personal. The book explores themes of grace, repentance, obedience, spiritual warfare, and the new heart, with a preacher’s urgency. For me, that made the book feel wonderfully earnest in places. When he writes about the Beatitudes as a progression of the soul, or about Jesus resisting temptation through Scripture, the theology feels authentic. I didn’t always find the style polished in a literary sense, but I found it honest, emotionally present, and anchored by a genuine desire to help readers encounter Christ rather than merely analyze Him.
I found God Is Good to be an affectionate, plainspoken, and conviction-filled guide to Matthew, one that values clarity over complexity and devotion. Its concluding emphasis on the risen Christ gives the whole book a fitting sense of arrival, like a long walk ending in morning light. I’d recommend it especially to newer believers, small-group readers, or Christians who want a warm devotional companion through Matthew.
Pages: 199
Capturing the Experience
In Encounter, you share with readers your incredible experiences coping with culture shock, natural disaster, and classroom struggles while teaching at Leulumoega Fou College in Samoa in 1990. What did you most want to preserve about your time in Samoa?
I most wanted to capture the experience, what it taught me, and how it impacted my life following the experience. In capturing the experience, I sought to make the story as immersive as possible for the reader. I want them to feel what I felt when they step on a cockroach in bare feet first thing in the morning, the sweat on their face, tears in their eyes, and how the constant confusion and uncertainty of cultural collision drags us down emotionally. I want my readers to be as confused and uncertain as I was. I want them to face the hard moral choices I faced, and leave them to make their own decisions – what would they do in that time and place? What would they do now? Most of all, I want to preserve the search for wisdom, understanding, meaning and purpose to all the hardship and suffering. The reflective passages are there to help the reader reflect on the bigger picture, but with humility, acknowledging just how limited our knowledge and experience actually are or can be. To make the book immersive, I re-read and studied authors who I thought had done that well – like Steinbeck, Dickens, Hemingway, Frank McCourt, and contemporary thriller writers John Le Carre, John Grisham, and Lee Child. To help make scenes vivid, I returned to poets Shakespeare, TS Eliot, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Tolkien. For reflection, I turned to the way CS Lewis and Jennifer Worth (Call the Midwife) wrote their reflective pieces.
How did you decide what to include versus what to leave out, especially in more vulnerable or unflattering moments?
My guiding principle was to be honest with whatever I put in, but the need to keep the word count to under 100,000 meant I had to cut a lot out. I approached judgment of others by honestly sharing what they said and what they did so the reader could make their own judgment. Unflattering moments and vulnerability are a necessary part of learning, but also necessary to show contrast. The climb out of the valley of “badness” is only meaningful if we first know how bad that valley was for us.
In the case where I did provide judgement (characters Helen, Tammy, and some others) I did so because it was necessary to show my changing understanding of them – how my initial judgement changed from unflattering to gaining wisdom. This is most important, and most difficult for me to write about, in the case of my relationship with Helen, where my initial assessment slowly changes from someone I’m wary of, to someone I loved and cared for deeply. (The “real” Helen passed away from breast cancer in 2007 as a young mother with two young boys; Tammy passed away in 2021 after a life of overseas service as a teacher and nurse.) However, for many people working overseas as volunteers, aid workers or missionaries, it’s often our fellow workers and those we live with that are the most difficult, not those we go to serve. I wanted to share that experience in the hope that it would help others going through a similar struggle when thrown together with colleagues and co-workers they may not like. I want them to know that even if your negative assessments of difficult people turn out to be true, in true community, you still need to care for them, love them, and recognize you will need to depend on them.
How did your Christian faith shape the way you interpreted your experiences at the time?
We would not have gone to Samoa if we did not at least hold a Christian worldview. And we would probably not have persevered without having the challenge of Jesus words, and the example of both his life, and the lives of many Christians since that time. I mention St Francis and Mother Teresa, but there are many others. This is why each chapter starts with a quote from the words of Jesus, because it was those actual words that challenged me personally each step of the way.
In going to Samoa in 1990, the risk of death was very real since the previous year a field worker had died of Dengue fever, and there were other threats to safety and security we could not control. We believed then, as we do now, that if we died our death would not be an accident – that God would work this for good, for His purpose, and God’s purpose is what gave us purpose in whatever we did. I don’t think we would have willingly engaged in suffering and risked our security, peace, happiness, or life for something that we do not believe to be true. I have looked at atheism, and it is a selfish, meaningless, and purposeless wasteland.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from Encounter?
I hope they gain a window into what a life lived with purpose can look like, that such a life can be found following Jesus on the narrow road, that such a life may be hard, and involve suffering, but it will at least be very rich and will lead to an abundant life.
Author links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
When Ian and Heather leave Australia to teach in Samoa they expect hardship. They don’t expect a devastating cyclone followed by the slow dismantling of everything they thought they understood about the world.
Why are they being laughed at? Why is introducing someone offensive? What does respect look like? Navigating traditional Polynesian culture amid disaster, poverty and political tension, exposes their own cultural blind spots, assumptions and questions their deeply held beliefs. Good intentions are not enough. Join with them as they seek purpose and explore what justice, identity, faith and community mean in a radically different culture.
Raw, honest and unexpectedly funny, Encounter immerses you in the lived reality of being an outsider — the exhaustion, the mistakes, the fear, the beauty and resilience of Pacific Island life and community. Moving with the pace of a thriller, Encounter’s true story also wrestles with uncomfortable questions immigrants, travellers, and truth seekers know well: Where do I belong? Why am I here? Who am I when everything familiar is stripped away?
Perfect for readers who love biographies and memoirs that transport you into another world, want to be challenged or need a page turner they can’t put down.
Trauma-Informed Teaching: From Reaction to Restoration
Reading Trauma-Informed Teaching: From Reaction to Restoration felt less like moving through a conventional education manual and more like sitting across from someone who has paid dearly for what she knows and is determined to make that knowledge useful to other people. Author Dr. Annise Mabry’s central argument is clear from the start: children who’ve been shaped by trauma cannot be reached through punishment, rigid compliance, or sterile notions of rigor, and homeschool cooperatives, microschools, and other alternative learning spaces have a real chance to become places of safety, repair, and restored dignity instead. She builds that case through a framework of trauma awareness, restorative discipline, emotional safety, family partnership, crisis response, and educator sustainability, always returning to the same moral center: behavior is communication, regulation has to come before instruction, and restoration has to matter more than control.
I was moved by the book’s emotional honesty. Mabry is not writing from a polite professional distance. She’s writing out of lived stakes, and you can feel that in the pages about her daughter being treated as a problem to be removed rather than a child to be understood, and in the prologue, where she describes losing major grant funding while still carrying the needs of an entire community. That urgency gives the book its pulse. I was especially moved by the recurring insistence that so-called misbehavior often masks fear, shame, dissociation, or a learned survival strategy. The examples are concrete enough to land, from Nia’s transformation after adults stopped escalating consequences and started offering choice and reflection, to the small but piercing image of a child finally being able to say, “I do not understand. Can you help me?” Those moments keep the book from floating off into abstraction.
The book is strongest when Mabry lets her convictions sharpen into testimony. She has a gift for phrases that are blunt without being cold, memorable without sounding manufactured. The best lines have a kind of pastoral clarity. Even when the prose circles familiar points, the ideas underneath remain persuasive because they’re grounded in practice. Her distinction between trauma-informed and healing-centered learning is particularly strong, and the chapters on restorative language, community care, and educator burnout broaden the book beyond classroom management into something closer to an ethic of presence. I appreciated that she doesn’t just ask teachers to be gentler. She asks them to be steadier, more self-aware, and more willing to repair their own harm, too.
I found Trauma-Informed Teaching affecting, useful, and morally serious. It has the kind of conviction that’s infectious and makes the book compelling. What stays is not just the framework, but the feeling of being asked to imagine education as a site of restoration rather than sorting, punishment, or quiet abandonment. I’d recommend it especially to homeschool leaders, microschool founders, counselors, parents of trauma-impacted children, and classroom educators who are ready to think more deeply about what safety really means in a learning environment. This is a book for people who still believe school can be a place where someone’s life bends back toward hope.
Pages: 109 | ASIN : B0GH3H9Z76
Encounter – A Journey into Chaos, Culture and Compassion
Encounter is a memoir about an Australian Christian couple who go to Samoa in 1990 to teach at Leulumoega Fou College, then find themselves plunged into culture shock, institutional confusion, cyclone damage, scarcity, village life, classroom struggle, and morally wrenching encounters with the people around them. But that description is almost too tidy for the book Ian Reilly actually writes. What unfolds is less a neat missionary narrative than a long, bruising education in how little he knows, how quickly comfort evaporates, and how culture becomes legible only after it has first humiliated you. The early passport fiasco, the absurd misery of the Seaside Inn, the cyclone and its aftermath, the daily negotiations over water, food, heat, discipline, hospitality, and shame all accumulate into something larger than travel writing. It becomes a record of bewilderment, slowly turning into attention, and attention slowly turning into love.
Reilly has a real eye, and not just for beauty. He sees the gleam of lagoon water and mountain light, but also mildew, diesel fumes, mirror shards, cockroaches, centipedes, shabby classrooms, and the comic indignities of bodies trying and failing to cope with heat and fear. That balance matters. The prose is vivid without becoming ornamental, and funny in exactly the right places. I laughed at the Germans trying to open a coconut in the middle of the night, and I winced at the fan-forced oven of the Seaside Inn, but the humor never breaks the sincerity of the book. If anything, it deepens it. Reilly’s best passages have a kind of patient moral clarity. He doesn’t rush to make himself look wise, and that gives the narrative its credibility. He lets his confusion stay on the page. He lets other people remain difficult to interpret. I found that restraint appealing, because it makes the book feel lived rather than processed.
I was even more taken by the book’s ideas, precisely because they’re unsettled ideas rather than packaged lessons. Reilly keeps returning to the gap between judging and understanding, between romanticizing a culture and actually living inside its demands. The book is sharp about the limits of outsider perception, but it’s not coy about hard moral questions either. The sections on classroom discipline, communal obligation, and especially Pelopia’s story are painful because Reilly refuses easy moral vanity. He is trying to think seriously, as a Christian and as a guest, about what compassion means when you don’t control the social world you’re in, and when intervention itself can be clumsy, partial, or damaging. I appreciated that the book doesn’t confuse humility with moral passivity. Its compassion has weight to it. By the time Reilly writes about suffering, shared scarcity, and the way disaster forces him into a more intimate understanding of dependence, community, and providence, the ideas feel earned rather than declared. I didn’t agree with every theological or cultural framing, but I trusted the earnestness of the inquiry, and that trust carried me a long way.
I found Encounter moving, unsettling, and unusually mature in its self-scrutiny. It’s a book that understands that beauty and damage often occupy the same frame, and that cross-cultural love is rarely graceful at first. What stayed with me wasn’t a single grand insight so much as the cumulative moral weather of the book: the embarrassment, the tenderness, the stamina, the slow relinquishing of certainty. I’d recommend it especially to readers interested in memoir, faith, teaching, development work, and the messy reality of cultural encounter, but also to anyone who values nonfiction that is thoughtful enough to let complexity remain complex. It’s a thoughtful book, and I closed it feeling that Reilly had not only remembered Samoa vividly, but had remembered his own unfinishedness with unusual honesty.
Pages: 380 | ASIN : B0GRPXC3SD
I KNOW WHAT I AM. BIBLICAL AND BIOLOGICAL
I Know What I Am: Biblical and Biological is a fast-moving mashup of faith talk, human origins, and Black history, with the author jumping from fossils like “Dragon Man” and questions about Cain’s DNA to genetics, melanin, and big-picture identity claims. It also swings through Ethiopian Jews and Zionism, Byzantine icon history, Italy’s war in Ethiopia, Black military service in the US, the Herero and Nama genocide in Namibia, and modern media topics like Hollywood stereotypes and The Matrix.
The book has real momentum. It feels like someone talking straight from the heart. Sometimes I nodded along. The voice can be intense and punchy, with lots of bold questions and sudden pivots from science to scripture to politics. That energy kept me turning pages. The structure leans toward info bursts and quick claims.
The book aims for a grand bridge between biology and the Bible, and it ties that bridge to race, power, and historical memory. That’s a huge swing. I respect the ambition. The book sometimes stacks controversial statements next to fact-sheet style passages. The section on the Herero and Nama genocide hits hard, and it lands with moral weight. The chapters that connect media narratives to public beliefs have bite as well, especially the parts on racist film tropes and how stories get shaped in plain sight. The writing can slide from careful summary into certainty, then back again.
I appreciated how wide the images range in this book. One page might drop in a modern celebrity, then the next swings to an old statue, then you’re staring at a historical photo or a piece of artwork. That mix kept me alert, like the book was nudging me to see connections across time instead of staying stuck in one lane. It also made the ideas feel more real and less abstract, since I could actually see the faces, the symbols, and the history the author was trying to pull into the conversation.
I think this book works best for readers who like big themes, sharp opinions, and a collage style that mixes history notes with personal fire. I’d recommend it to curious readers who enjoy challenging material, who can sit with messiness, and who don’t mind stopping to fact-check and reflect as they go.
Pages: 137 | ASIN : B0GFPZ74BY
Collaborative Leadership for the Classroom
Collaborative Leadership for the Classroom lays out a clear path for teachers who want to shift from command and control habits to a way of leading that feels more open, human, and shared. Author Don Broadwell walks through the history of leadership, offers stories from classrooms and his own life, and builds a case for collaboration as the approach that suits today’s students. He explains how needs shape behavior, how teachers can guide discussions without dominating them, and how shared problem-solving can change the feel of a classroom.
The writing carries a kind of calm confidence that made me feel like I was learning from someone who has lived every word. At times, I got caught up in the stories and forgot I was reading a book about leadership. I liked how Broadwell keeps things grounded. He does not dress ideas up in fancy language or make collaboration sound magical. He shows the bumps, the awkward moments, and the kids who surprise adults when given the chance to speak up. I felt a little jolt when he described students discovering each other’s needs because it reminded me how often adults skip that step in real life. The honesty here hit me in the gut, in a good way.
I also had mixed feelings in spots. The structure is solid, but some sections stretch out longer than I expected. The sections on anger and hidden needs pulled me in more than I anticipated. They felt real. I appreciated how the author frames collaboration as a teachable skill rather than a warm and fuzzy ideal. I caught myself smiling at the Crow ritual example because it made collaboration feel simple enough for anyone to grasp, yet deep enough to matter.
I think Collaborative Leadership for the Classroom works best for teachers who feel tired of carrying the whole load alone or who sense that students are ready for something more genuine than top-down instruction. It would also fit leaders outside education who want a plainspoken introduction to shared problem-solving. If you want a guide that feels like a conversation with a wise mentor and if you don’t mind a few slow steps along the way, this book is worth reading.
Pages: 126 | ASIN : B0F7C3WCFL
Scams are the World’s Fastest-Growing Crime
Scams Are the World’s Fastest-Growing Crime is a straight-talking field guide to modern scams. Author Ken Ray walks through how scams evolved, why they work, and how they hit regular people in every channel of life, from phone and email to social media, crypto, fake stores, and in-person tricks. He starts with history and psychology, then gives a simple four-step model of every scam: setup, lure, attack, hook. After that, he moves into detailed profiles of common schemes, global impact, why victims stay silent, and how scammers pick their targets. He wraps it all up with danger scales, checklists, legal context, a glossary, and a very raw victim story, all tied to Scam Watchdogs’ mission to protect, educate, and expose.
What I liked most was the human focus. Ray keeps reminding me that scams are not about clever tech. They are about emotions and habits. He lays out trust, fear, greed, love, guilt, and overconfidence as levers that scammers pull, then shows how those levers show up in real situations like “grandparent” calls, romance cons, and fake tax threats. I felt angry reading the sections on shame and silence, and how victims stay quiet because they blame themselves or worry no one will listen. The chapters on the snowball effect and the global scale of the problem hit pretty hard too. They show how a tiny “test payment” can snowball into life-changing loss and how those losses add up across families, small businesses, and even trust in basic institutions. Reading that, I felt a mix of frustration and urgency, like this is not just sad stories; this is a public safety issue.
I liked how practical and plain the book feels. The tone is warm and professional but still sounds like a real person talking, not a legal brief. The early chapters give clear frameworks, then the scam profiles repeat the same structure each time with “setup, lure, attack, hook” and a danger rating. That rhythm made it easy for me to skim to what I needed. I also appreciated the checklists, the “Stay Safe” section, and the simple definitions at the back, since those are easy to share with less tech-savvy family members. The author’s note about using AI tools like ChatGPT as a helper, while taking responsibility for the facts, felt transparent and current, which I liked.
I came away feeling both rattled and oddly reassured. Rattled, because the examples show how easy it is for smart, cautious people to get pulled in, especially through investment and romance scams that mix money with emotion. Reassured, because the book keeps coming back to simple habits that anyone can build: pause, verify, talk to someone, report what happened. There is a steady compassion for victims that cuts through the usual blame, especially in the dedication and the closing message that every report turns a private loss into a public shield.
I would recommend this book to everyday readers who want to protect themselves and their families, especially people who do not live in the world of cybersecurity but still live on their phones and laptops all day. It is a strong choice for parents, caregivers, community leaders, and small business owners who need something they can hand to others without translation. People looking for a clear, empathetic starter guide and a reference you can dip into whenever a weird text or email pops up, it does the job very well.
Pages: 175 | ASIN : B0G35VCVP1
Essential Safeguards
The Teaching Guarantee: Three Things is a heartfelt manifesto on education, distilling a lifetime of leadership into three essential reflections: what excites, what concerns, and what truly matters in schools today. How did you decide on the “three things” structure?
Effective communication across all levels in a school community is the foundation of a well-functioning, supportive, and successful educational environment. It enhances collaboration, trust, and accountability, leading to better school outcomes and a more harmonious school culture.
As a school leader, effective communication is a priority for me. As with everything I do, I ask myself, how can I improve this? How can I ensure that my message reaches everyone? It is by no means an easy thing to accomplish.
Towards the end of 2022- 2023, I experimented with the 3 Things approach at weekly school assemblies. It ensured my message was simple, pertinent, and received. Ramble on too much, and any message can get lost and quickly forgotten. This approach enabled effective communication!
Ever since then, any time I talk, I relate it to the three things framework. My first mention of the model was in The Teaching Guarantee: Every Day is Different (Chapter 63: School Assemblies)
You express optimism about AI in education. What safeguards do you believe are essential to ensure it enhances rather than harms learning?
Drawing on decades of educational leadership experience, here are the essential safeguards I believe schools need for AI implementation:
Academic Integrity Foundation
The most critical safeguard is teaching students when and how to use AI appropriately, not simply banning it. Just as we taught proper research methods when the internet emerged, we must establish clear guidelines for AI as both a learning tool and a shortcut.
Teacher Professional Development
First Having led through multiple technology transitions, I’ve learned that successful implementation always begins with comprehensive teacher training. Educators need hands-on experience with AI tools before they can effectively guide students. Without this, we risk either complete avoidance or misuse.
Graduated Implementation by Grade Level
Primary school students need different AI exposure than secondary school students. I recommend starting with AI as a brainstorming partner in upper elementary, progressing to research assistance in middle school, and finally introducing advanced applications in high school.
Transparent Usage Policies
Students, parents, and teachers must understand exactly when AI use is permitted, required, or prohibited. These policies should be as transparent as our existing guidelines for calculators, spell-check, or internet research.
Critical Thinking Enhancement, Not Replacement
The key safeguard is ensuring AI amplifies human reasoning rather than replacing it. Students should learn to question AI outputs, verify information, and understand AI limitations.
Regular Assessment of Learning Outcomes
We must continuously monitor whether AI is improving learning or creating dependency. This requires new assessment methods that distinguish between AI-assisted and independent student work.
The technology has changed, but the fundamental principle remains: any educational tool should increase student agency and understanding, not diminish it.
What advice would you give to new teachers feeling overwhelmed by bureaucracy and burnout?
Drawing from five decades of watching new teachers navigate these same challenges, here’s the advice that has proven most effective:
Start with Your “Why”
When bureaucracy feels suffocating, reconnect with what brought you to teaching. Keep one photo or note from a student’s breakthrough on your desk. I’ve seen countless teachers weather difficult seasons by anchoring themselves to their core purpose rather than the administrative noise.
Master the Essential Ignore the Optional
Every school has required tasks and “strongly suggested” initiatives. Learn quickly to distinguish between them. Focus your energy on what directly impacts student learning and meets actual mandates. The rest can wait.
Find Your Teacher Tribe
Identify 2-3 very experienced teachers who still love their work despite the challenges. These aren’t the complainers in the faculty room, but rather the ones who have learned to work within the system while maintaining their passion. Their wisdom is invaluable.
Create Non-Negotiable Boundaries
Decide your work hours and protect them fiercely. I’ve watched too many promising teachers burn out in their second year because they tried to do everything perfectly. Excellence in a few areas beats mediocrity across all areas.
Document Everything Simply
Keep basic records of parent communications, student interventions, and administrative requests. This isn’t about distrust—it’s about protecting your time from repetitive questions in the future.
Using What Works to Improve What Doesn’t
Reflect deeply on your approaches that work well with your classes. Identify the key actions or processes that ensure success. Then apply these to those approaches that do not work to your expectations and enjoy the difference.
Remember: This Too Shall Pass
Educational initiatives come and go. I’ve witnessed six major reform movements. The bureaucracy that feels overwhelming today will likely be replaced by something else in three years. Focus on timeless teaching principles.
The students in your classroom need you to survive and thrive, not to burn out trying to satisfy every administrative demand.
In your experience, what’s the single most underappreciated quality in effective school leadership?
Institutional memory.
After 52 years, I’ve come to believe this is the most underappreciated quality in effective school leadership—and the one that separates truly transformational leaders from those who simply manage crises.
Most leaders focus on immediate challenges: this year’s test scores, next month’s budget deadline, and today’s parent complaint. However, the most effective school leaders I’ve known—and have learned to become myself—understand that every decision exists within a larger institutional narrative.
When I see a principal who knows why the third-grade team resists new math curriculum (because they lived through three failed adoptions in five years), or who remembers that the current discipline problems mirror patterns from a decade ago that were solved through specific community partnerships—that’s institutional memory at work.
This quality manifests in several critical ways:
· Recognising which “new” initiatives are recycled ideas that failed before.
· Understanding the deeper cultural currents that drive staff resistance or enthusiasm.
· Knowing which community relationships took years to build and must be carefully maintained.
· Seeing how current challenges connect to historical patterns.
Technology has changed dramatically since I began, but the human dynamics in schools follow remarkably consistent patterns. Leaders with strong institutional memory can navigate these patterns more effectively than those who constantly reinvent solutions.
Without this quality, even brilliant leaders find themselves fighting the same battles repeatedly, wondering why their excellent ideas meet unexpected resistance, or why their predecessor’s “failed” programs might have been ahead of their time.
Schools are living institutions with long memories. The most effective leaders honour and learn from that institutional wisdom.
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