I arrived home, tired, and feeling uninspired, unsure what I would write. Several ideas are running around, but they required more percolation time. I broke from routine and checked Facebook first A colleague from the Circle of Trust retreat in Seattle shared an inspiring, heart warming article: “A teacher, a student and a 39-year-long lesson in forgiveness.”
One line that resonated was “the beauty of an apology is that everyone wins because it reveals not only who we are, but who we hope we are.” An apology is transformational rather than transactional. It takes the form of acts and words offered with compassion, care, and integrity.
Please take a moment to read.
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 
Ivon, I heard this story on NPR, and it was quite moving. As teachers, you put your heart out on the line time and again. You impact students in ways you’ll never know. This story says so much on so many levels.
I look forward to seeing you again in Seattle in October!
Barb
It was uplifting on a day and during a week I needed the extra boost.