Last night, just before I went to bed, I was watching the news from one of the Spokane TV stations. Washington State completed an audit for public education. One of the conclusions was that simply moving 1%of funding from central offices and administration would add about 1000 classroom teachers states-wide. I am not suggesting this could be done across the board in every jurisdiction but it is food for thought. What if we moved 10% from school administration and central office administration? What would the benefits be? Right off the top of my head I thought of additional classroom teachers and effective professional learning could be undertaken.
Will this even be considered or are we merely protecting an antiquated and bloated status quo?
I am working on the World Cafe summaries from several months ago trying to find software to organize, analyze, and present the data in a meaningful way. The March 17, 2012 event yielded what was very close to a haiku. I massaged it a bit this morning and came up with the following:
schooling as a place
can just be interrupting
learning for children.
It sounds a bit like Mark Twain.
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 
A brave and candid insight for a teacher to make. And it is like Twain’s: “I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.”
Thank you for stopping by. I thought it was Twain-like. I think educators have to step up and share their voice in the transformation of education. We are in the trenches and should be willing to step up.
I just sit back and watch in amazement at the level of waste and mismanagement of money meant to go to the students.
You should see it from my perspective. Teachers are taxpayers, parents, and members of a broader set of communities. The challenge is, and will continue to be, until we, as taxpayers and citizens, agree it has gone for enough and take steps it is self-perpetuating and grows on itself.