Friday I spend without students, at least for now. There are rumours teaching four core junior high subjects is not enough. Apparently, I don’t need time to plan, mark, complete report cards, and other sundry tasks which keep the classroom humming.
I work hard to stay positive. Sometimes the tendency is to create negative narratives rather than let each moment live itself fully. I find this is hard work, but it grows easier to set aside the dis-ease.
Alone is different
Not loneliness.
In solitude
Gifts of deep silence
The presence of presents
I grow whole
Energize the spirit
Recollect the ordinary in extraordinary–
Not just a root word;
It is the root.
About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
Teacher as Transformer 
Ivon, my mother in law just recently retired after 37 years as a teacher. The hours she spent at home putting together lesson-plans, grading, and creating boggled my mind. There is no way any teacher gets enough quiet time in which to get everything needed and wanted done. SO KUDOS for all your hard work and dedication. You are treasured more than you will ever know. Thanks for being Extra-ordinary 🙂
Elizabeth, 37 years is an amazing career. I hope she enjoys her retirement, because she clearly must have loved teaching. It is quite often its own reward.
YES…i need to work harder on this. “i work hard to stay positive. Sometimes the tendency is to create negative narratives rather than let each moment live itself fully. I find this is hard work, but it grows easier to set aside the disease.”