Blueberries | Jamie Vollmer.
This is worth reading. It fell into one of my email boxes this morning. In theory, I agree with the idea that we cannot, as teachers, return our students like Mr. Vollmer could return his blueberries. Fundamentally though, there is still a problem. In the province of Alberta. there are over 25% of students who will not finish high school. Those are the ones who leave our schools. What about those who do not leave and finish? There are still some amongst them who are on the margins and school has not served well. The 25% is an average.What about students who live in First Nation communities, in the inner city, or face any number of other life issues?
Education needs an overhaul. There is a genuine need for a different conversation and not sticking our heads in the sand. Please take a few minutes 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 