I am following with a wonderful poem that echoes this thought-provoking piece by Francesca.

Francesca Zelnick's avatarWords/Love

I’m not afraid of silence. Some people are, and so they fill the world with superfluous sounds. They look upon silence as an absence, a void. But that’s not what silence is. It is not emptiness.

He told me that he felt badly for the elderly couple sitting a few tables down. They were eating without conversation. “They’ve run out of things to say to each other.” Their silence made him sad.

But I thought it was kind of beautiful, the way comfort made room for quiet. I have felt this a few times in my life. I have sat with so much love and understanding between us that words have been unnecessary. Not everything needs to be said.

Some days I feel stuck in repetition. I have spoken these words before. I will say them all again, over and over, for the rest of my life. If I were…

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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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  1. Pingback: Fire by Judy Brown « Teacher as Transformer

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