I occasionally forget what got me where I am today. I follow a blog called Slappshot and its author poses questions. Recently, he asked, “What’s your line of work and if you could choose another career…what would it be?”
I responded, “I would not want to change anything, but, if I could keep everything else in tact, I want to be a professional hockey player.” You see what I have is very good. Yes, I struggle with things each day, but around me there are people who care and this poem is for them. I am learning to focus on the positive in life instead of the negative.
Each morning
Awaken
Tentatively step forward
Discover voice
Discover meaning
That which nourishes, waters, and heals the soul
With those who stand with you
For you
By you
Share the journey
Break bread
Mutual, Reciprocal, Companionship
A refuge in each other
Speak mindfully, heartfully, graciously
Hear mindfully, heartfully, graciously
Your self and the other present.
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
Teacher as Transformer 
Wonderful advice. The world would be a much nicer place if only we could all hear and speak, mindfully, heartfully, and graciously. Thanks for sharing this it’s inspiring. (I think I need to make myself a poster with those words on it. 🙂 )
That is a great thought, to make a poster. I will consider this as well.