I close my week with this wonderful poem by May Sarton. As I reflect on the week passed, I hope I am left with more questions than answers and the time to luxuriate in the space between the question and answer. I noticed today and yesterday, when I pause and let go, my monkey mind chatter is greatly reduced. It has been helpful.
The phoebe sits on her nest
Hour after hour,
Day after day,
Waiting for life to burst out
From under her warmth.
Can I wave a nest for silence,
Weave it out of listening,
Listening,
Layer upon layer?
But one must first become small,
Nothing but a presence
Attentive as a nesting bird,
Proffering no slightest wish
Toward anything that might happen
Or be given,
Only the warmth, faithful waiting,
Contained in one’s smallness.
Beyond the question, the silence.
Before the answer, the silence.
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 
Beautiful
Thank you for the kind words.
You are very welcome
🙂
Eunice
Very calming. Can we be so patient? I love it!
It is a challenge, but a worthy one to accept.
You must be a great teacher. Love your blog!
I leave it to others to judge the former and I appreciate the latter. After my time in Seattle last weekend, I felt good again about being a good teacher. I felt I had lost my way on the journey and needed to get my Mojo back.
What happened in Seattle? I am going to Seattle Nov. 15-19 for an NCSS Conference.
I attended a Circle of Trust retreat which is based on the writing of Parker Palmer. It was a great opportunity to sit quietly, look inward, and find the wisdom.
I have heard of that, but haven’t checked into it. Glad you had a great time. Sounds like it helped inspire you.
I believe that a wonderful and important resource would have been lost if you hadn’t rediscovered your greatness, my friend. It is visible to many others. Sometimes it takes others to remind us.
Russ
I appreciate the comment Russ.