I am a little rushed, but found some time to sit and work with the blog. I was unable to spend the time answering all the comments, but hope to find some time late after we do a bit more visiting. As well, I apologize for not attending to the awards that we so generously bestowed on me. I will attend to them when we get home after the New Year.
I think, as I enter 2013, there will be considerable change upcoming for me professionally. I look forward to some times of transition and building relationships like I have over the past few months with this blog. Mary Oliver always seems to find the words I seek as I look ahead.
Sometimes I spend all my day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. To do this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a little book. So I suppose, from this point of view, it’s reasonable that my friends say: what foolishness! [He’s] got [his] heads in the clouds again.
But it’s not. Of course I have to give up, but by then I’m half crazy with the wonder of it–the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.
Take care friends, ring in the New Year, and be safe my friends.
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 
Have a good celebration and may all you wish for happen in 2013.
Thank you Alex. Enjoy your celebration and live into your wishes for the New Year.
YES!
Thanks, Ivon, for sharing “the wonder of it all.” Wishing you, and all of us, a year filled with the wonder of the world around us
Best wishes, Ivon, for the coming year. May we all be abundantly blessed, and then share those blessings with others. Namaste.
Lizzie that would be beautiful for all of us to be blessed and see the healing that could take place in the world. Namste to you and best wishes in the New Year.
Yes, a very sweet year to you.
And the very same to you Shimon.
Wishing you a bright and beautiful 2013 full of all your heart desires. Thanks for connecting here. 🙂 Peace.
Thank you. Enjoy a wonderful New Year.
Hello Ivon !! wishing you a 2013 with great happiness and success !!
Thank you Isaac and much happiness and success to you in the New Year.
Hi Ivon, best wish and wellness always being with you!
Cheers!
Happy new year Ivon, wish you all the best.
Best wishes,
mei
Wish You A… Truly Fulfilling, Great, Prosperous, Blissful, Healthy, Bright, Colorful, Delightful, Mind Blowing, Energetic, Terrific & An Extremely Happy, Peaceful and Love filled New Year 2013.
May This Year Be The Best Of All Previous Years !!!
Good luck and many blessings for the changes in your professional life, Ivon. I wish a great year ahead for you.
“Sometimes I spend all my day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. To do this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a little book. So I suppose, from this point of view, it’s reasonable that my friends say: what foolishness! [He’s] got [his] heads in the clouds again.”
Love it! 🙂
Happy new year Ivon. May all your dreams come true.
I agree about Mary Oliver.
May you have every blessing in the new year, Ivon.
I appreciate your visits to “Into the Bardo” …
Be well and blog on,
Jamie
I will continue visiting and sharing. Take care Jamie and enjoy your New Year.
In this festive evening sleigh let you bring the best wishes of happiness :joy, love and happiness.May happiness and blessings to you and forever stop by and follow .
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Thank you and Happy New Year.
The fool is a wise character – and the one who knows how to have fun. So why not be a bit foolish from time to time?! 😀
I might be hanging out beneath your tree, listening to the grass growing.
Glad you came by again. Also glad to see you laughing in a tree. Be well.
It was a good place to laugh. Take care, Murielle. It was good to hear from you again.
“earth-praise” : I like that.
You were in a good place, this day, I see, Ivon. A lovely post.
Counting leaves in a tree is not for me
but not because I can’t count.
To mount, I hesitate,
to mount
such an enormous job.
Lazy!
I was in a good place and continue to be there. Thank you for the lovely comment Noeleen.