This is for those who follow my blog and are on Facebook with me. I know some of you are horse people. Francesca is a wonderful writer, storyteller, and a horse person. Enjoy.

Francesca Zelnick's avatarWords/Love

When I was younger, I used to ride horses. Every Saturday, my mother would drive us out to the stables and wait while I took lessons. My parents were always waiting for me while I learned new things. They did it silently, and honorably, and without proper thanks. This is what people do for those they love.

The first time I ever got to ride outside, away from the confined ring of the stables with its little jumps and man-made obstacles, I rode a horse named Tarzan. He was properly named. He was tame, but still a beast. He was sweet, but wild. When he whinnied, the whole barn shook.

We went out as a group into the fields. We walked. We trotted. It was a beautiful day. But then something happened that I couldn’t see or hear. Tarzan got spooked. He took off, running.

I tried to slow him…

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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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