The new and fascinating book by the veteran educator, Nissim Matalon, “The place where I can be”, is used in a double sense: one – the self-realization of the one who seeks to lead, the other – a call for anyone reading the book to succeed in realizing his powers and desires. His life and experience a life with meaning.
The book provides a glimpse into the dilemmas and dilemmas led by a leader, and is written from the author’s extensive experience. Although he writes about himself, he has insights that may help anyone who is looking for advice and needs guidance on how to develop their leadership.
Matalon’s conception, as formulated in the opening chapter of the book, in which he also tells about the background and purposes of the book, has throughout the years been subject to observation from the outside and inside. That is, on the one hand to look inward and seek to find within him the way according to his expectations of himself; On the other hand, outsiders also expect leadership and leadership and approach, so this should be done in the best, most meaningful and effective way possible.
Thus, the ability to lead stems from the fact that people see it as necessary, both the leader himself and his environment. Creating the combination of listening to yourself and listening to the voices of the environment is an ongoing process of learning while moving.
According to Nissim, in his personal experience there are no separate spaces: that is, it is not two separate parts of life where work exists and the home and family exist, but something that is one entity. And so, in a mutual and authentic dialogue between people, everything grows and grows – the students and he as a principal.
This concept offers a new and supervised look at the nature of management, and is well described throughout the book. The responses of the students who told him about their empowerment due to the nature of his leadership, testify more than anything to the success of this important insight.
So is another idea that the author emphasizes – loyalty to self-values and self-control not to deviate from them. And when there is sometimes an act or such an anomaly, the goal is to learn from it. Always be with a desire to improve. It comes from a place of constant search and a desire for progress and correction.
And here’s something quite surprising: it turns out that precisely from the place that recognizes limitations, looks directly at the difficulty and knows what your self-ability is, you can reach the greatest heights. The book is written as a kind of summary, not chronological but one that seeks to provide tools, advice and methods to succeed in doing so, precisely from the various stations in the author’s life. For example, self-observation, against the background of success, the pain and difficulty of learning from them and drawing lessons.
A cornerstone of Matalon’s management concept is the creation of a ‘different drumming’, a different, renewed and challenging rhythm within existing systems. The encounter between the rhythms creates movement and renewal. Prominent examples of this are given in the book.
In the story “The Just Community” – a school within the large school in Arad, where the students were involved in pedagogical areas, in the management and design of relationships in their school community; And in the story of a battle plan, which brings a different spirit and different action into the wider education system, thus creating a renewed occurrence in the system.
The concept is relevant, according to Matalon, also to any leader, who should strive for the existence of a “different drumming” in his perception of the work and its implementation. Indeed, the author, Nissim Matalon, has his hands full in leading projects and making them extremely significant both in terms of quantity and in terms of their pedagogical quality: he led and established together with other people the battle plan for involvement in education. For over 20 years he served as the program’s executive director, who became a flagship in the Ministry of Education due to its meteoric success.
Its goal is to enable equality of opportunity and reduce gaps, learning of many and varied areas of knowledge, with personal expression and creating a sense of competence. The beginning of the program was with 7 communities, few schools and several hundred students. Today, following Matalon’s leadership and management, it has become a system with no less than 4,000 people who develop, create and teach quality enrichment to hundreds of thousands of students in about 120 authorities.
He also ran the high school in Arad, which grew in its time from 500 to more than 1,500 students.
Today he accompanies people as a coach, consultant and mentor, on their way to personal fulfillment and professional development.
These and other stations, with the great experience that the author has gained in them, on the various challenges, make him in my eyes one worth reading his book and the wise. Recommend Go to the site and order The new book.
