Will we be 21st Century Renaissance people? This question emerged from a recent conversation with a Grade 8 Social Studies class. We discussed a broad, nuanced, and emergent worldview.
Specialization and expertise are not the calling cards of success. Adaptation and transformation are at the heart of contemporary education. Transformation is not just a synonym for change and is reflective of dramatic and systemic change. I understand transformation as a mindful, incremental process producing real change over time framed around evolving eloquent questions. What change do we need? New conversations about reimagining education producing compassionate leaders for a 21st Century Renaissance. What role will education play in helping young people become the leaders of this Renaissance? Is public education capable of transformation? Are there leaders capable of bringing forth tomorrow’s leadership? What will education of this nature look like?
Renaissance is rebirth and a time of metamorphosis and transformation. What emerges from the chrysalis stage? Ideas mature and become capable of further adaptation. Human endeavour requires rich, inclusive conversations for profound change to occur instead of superficial patching what the outdated models that exist. We need to prepare the soil for transformative conversations focused on eloquent questions where answers are not assumed before the conversation and invite diverse views during the course of the conversational journey.
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 
Interesting, & inquiring…