Questions, real questions, are scary. They need me to face the unknown. What don’t I understand? It is easy to chase real questions away and deal with the easy ones.
Each day I ask:
What is my question?”
What wonder is there?
Can I live curiously?
Can I touch my questions?
Be honest,
Be awake,
Open my heart.
Refuse false questions–
Those I obsessively chase,
Leave me unfulfilled,
Sullied and dirty.
Real questions raise turmoil—
They cause fear–
Am I ready?
Can I navigate turbulent,
Uncharted seas?
Can I delve deeper?
Lay a foundation–
Not on sand;
On rock;
Where I am grounded.
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 
Yes, you can. Xoxo
Beautiful words – no doubt, questions open up life. Thanks Ivon.
Thank you Don.
Beautiful and well expressed.
Thank you Lvsrao.
Oooh, Ivon; they’re real questions..!
And sometimes real questions do cause fear. If there is an easier way, I don’t know it…!
They certainly do Carolyn. A colleague once told the three most powerful words are “I don’t know.” I agreed they were 1b with “I love you” which seems equally as scary at times.
Oh, my dear teacher, how I love when YOU write! This is my favorite so far. It is superficial existence that I FEAR — and so admire and adore those willing to “delve deep” and truly get to know themselves. These are the inspired souls who illuminate our world…Thank you for sharing your beautiful mind!
Thank you for the beautiful words. I love questions more than answers.
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To Live truly and fully I believe you must embrace the Fear and ask the tough questions. Even when you do not like the answers you grow and that leads you toward Enlightenment. I am learning this slowly. Peace.
Sometimes the answers we don’t like are the most revealing. Perhaps we learn more from the fear and uncertainty they bring.
I like the message and the way you crafted it, Ivon.
Russ
I appreciate the comment Russ.