I took a deep breath and slowed down for a few moments to post these very important contributions you made to my learning. You will find the images of the March 17 World Cafe Table Posters and March 17 Wall Posters posters on the blog. I will summarize them in the next few days and post them. They look amazing. I apologize for the delay and only offer that in the days leading to spring break, appointments, and flying to Portland, time was stretched. Your time and contributions to each event were appreciated and valued.
I want to express my gratitude to each of you for taking time to advance my learning through the World Cafe events and Appreciative Inquiry. You contributed to and guided my thinking as I prepared a presentation I am delivering entitled The Mindful Servant-Leader. The four events we attended demonstrated that a positive focus on important questions asked in a safe and spacious manner yield unexpected answers and directions. Community emerged through the process and people communicated about ordinary and extraordinary aspects of learning. Dialogue and conversation give and affirm voice to each member of a community. Voices are greatest in the collective and we found new, eloquent questions. Answers were assumed to be unknown when the questions were formed and asked.
I will leave you with a passage from Mindful by Mary Oliver: I say to myself/how can you help/but grow wise/with such teachings/as these–/the untrimmable light/of the world,/the ocean’s shine,/the prayers that are made/out of grass?
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, nonviolence and its anticipatory relationship with the future, as essential elements to teaching and learning.
Academic publications can be found at Ivon Gile Prefontaine on ResearchGate
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 