Despite the weather, we had a great day. Many students do not attend Fridays. In past years, we attended every second Monday. Our administration changed that this year without consulting parents or me. I struggled with it for several months and made a dramatic shift a couple of months ago. I decided to devote Fridays to art i.e. drawing, painting, and building. I am not an artist in that sense, but was able to get access to resources from a friend who is an artist and an excellent teacher. The students enjoy the change. We built kites today and I felt a positive and life-giving energy in the room. I thought of this poem by Lao Tzu.
Living humans are soft and limber.
Dead they are hard and rigid.
Living, the 10, 000 grasses and wood species are soft and crisp.
So “hard” and “rigid” accompany death.
“Soft” and “limber” accompany life.
So if armies are coercive, they do not triumph.
When wood is strong, the axe comes out.
Strength and dominance reside below.
The soft and limber belong higher.
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 
Intriguing poem. Very thoughtful.
Thank you Tony.
I can only imagine how much your students learn from you, given the significance of what I learn just by reading your posts..
Thank you for the kind comment.
Reblogged this on lost creek publishing.
Let’s not forget, though, that cows eat grass. One doesn’t want to get too soft…
True; one always has to be aware of the world he or she lives in.
Your students are lucky to have your guidance, Ivon!
Thank you Amy.
So as I become less limber, I become less alive, closer to death. I’m going to exercise and stretch – RIGHT NOW!!! 🙂 Great post, Ivon. 🙂
Thank you Marsha. I have to do the same; perhaps a bit of hot yoga.
Ohh Ivon, I need to even more now. I ate ice cream and brownies. Yikes! I should never have let my husband talk me into making those brownies. 🙂
Well, I had ice cream but no brownies.
Points for you, Ivon, minus points for me! 🙂 Actually I’m getting more and more points on the scale! 🙂
Thought provoking. Thank you.
Yes, it was one full of paradox and explanation. You are welcome Lvsrao.