In education, we talk about bullying a lot but our schools are too big and the adults who are closest to children are often too overwhelmed with getting through the next class or day to build healthy relationships. More problematic is the way adults treat each other and children in the presence of others. Words are simply not enough. Real change in our educational systems is long overdue. Are you listening politicians and school managers?

Sharmishtha Basu's avatarRealm of Empress Musie

There is no heroism
In tormenting the weak
Ganging up against those
You dislike or do not understand.
To ruin a thing you can’t have!
It only throws the limelight
On your weakness, cowardice
How scared you are of failure
Or something you can’t
Grasp, control or have.
If it was not so
You would have simply co-existed
With that thing that just is not
You or yours
Like flowers co exist with thorns.

Sharmishtha Basu
4.3.13

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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

6 responses »

  1. We appreciate your work and your words. Next generations need the help of people like you 🙂

    Reply
  2. Working to create a good next generation of influencers is a huge task Ivon, I’m so glad you are on it. Big hug, Sheri

    Reply
  3. How large are your schools?

    Reply
    • They vary in size from about 120 students to 1500. It does not seem to make a difference though. Part of the issue is the adult on adult bullying. Teachers can be unrelenting with each other. That is what children see.

      Reply

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