Many days I wonder about what other are doing, what causes them to do it, and what I can do to control their behaviours. I used the word do a lot in that first sentence. When I wonder that way, I become angry, frustrated, and hurt. I become a human doing instead of a human being. Being present and living each moment mindfully is part of this being.
Some words and an image to help us be today. Happy summer solstice.
The art of life isn’t controlling what happens, which is impossible; it’s using what happens.
~Gloria Steinem
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 
Ah, Ivon, I think this lesson is crucial to becoming free on so many levels! I too am beginning to grasp what it is to be and not just do; to equate myself and define myself not by what my career path is or what I can accomplish, but in who I am intrinsically! A very wise post!
I find it is a challenge for teachers. We get busy and lose our self in that busyness. I always need a reminder.
Dear Ivon,
There are many moments in my existence when all I wanted to “DO” was to just be, but to my disappointment I never managed to as I believe I am born to be a human doing. And so many of us are the same…although we really need o break from all that doing we call evolution.
I find as I am getting older, and hopefully, more mature and spend more time in reflective places the being is slowly replacing the doing. It is hard work I must admit, but comes with patience and is worthwhile.
Great post, thank you!
Doing is very close to performing. And to my great sadness most schools (and educational systems) seem to focus on performing, instead of learning.
And they don’t even notice how those are two different things!!!
It is interesting that we are revisiting the role of marks in school. A fundamental question might be do marks add or detract from being a learner?
Thank you Nina for your comment and moving the conversation forward.
My pleasure, indeed. I guess that I am just too passionate about mindful education, and thus my personal filter is almost always set on the question: how does this improve learning? Which, of course, I see as a fundamental survival skill.
Children are natural born learners (which to my brain also translates as being curious and being interested, and the emphasis is in the word “being”) – but they lose that skill during formal education. Why? Why do they become doers?
Thank you for providing me lots of food for thought! (My mind is already racing to busyworking instead of learning…)
I am glad to share with a mindful teacher. I am on a similar journey into mindful practice.
It’s a difficult one trying to get your head around. When you’ve been programmed to react for so long it’s hard to take a step back and analyze instead. Takes practice. Practice and a different way of thing.
I like this thought and shall begin this practice. I will try!
Thank you.
It is a practice and takes practice. I find some days better than others when I am able to shut down my automatic pilot in my mind.