A year ago, I was in an increasingly dark place. There was little positive in certain aspects of my life. A question emerged: “What is my lot in life?” I quickly realized I was trying to change things I had little or no control over instead of focusing on what I did control in life, living in the moment and being present. I undertook a journey that began with the question, “Who am I?” I completed a directed studies course on mindfulness focused around the question, “What is there about mindful practice that can help me live a fuller, richer life in each moment?” I read Thomas Merton, Parker Palmer, Thich Nhat Hanh, and others on the subject of mindfulness. I attended spiritual retreats and meditated. I posted an entry entitled Connectivity + Synchronicity = Love. Connecting with me the important first step. Yesterday, the synchronicity continued when this blog posting found is way into my life.
Read what Marie posted. I am still a work in progress, but the ways I have used to date are immensely helpful. Take care.
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
Teacher as Transformer 