This is a wonderful blog entry from an Australian teacher.  Elke pointed out the roles of our lives are intertwined and are connected dualistic compartments. They complete our lives acknowledging the dualistic nature of being human. We bring the life experiences as a parent to the classroom and reciprocate by using the life experience gleaned from the classroom as parents. Our life story is a rich experiential tapestry lived in the moment as we learn along side our students. Not only is learning messy, it is rewarding and energizing.

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I love Alfie Kohn. I stumbled on his work when I had my first child and bought lots of parenting books to read. His book Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes made me rethink parenting techniques and has also had an impact on how I have taught and how I want to teach in the future.

It is painful sometimes to hear my son tell me how he was rewarded with something at school for being good, kind, smart or tidy.  Hey!  You’re a good, kind, smart & tidy kid just because that’s who you are, because it gives you intrinsic value, because it makes you feel good to be good, to be kind etc.  Yeah, yeah, I know I don’t want to be a kill-joy, my son likes the rewards because he sees other kids value these rewards.  I just…

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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

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