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 
Arthur Rubinstein’s words are so true.
I always think about success as being satisfied with a job done to the best of my ability and moving on to the next task with no regrets. I used to think of my having to quit my job 3 years ago as failure, but now, I realise it was acknowledging the truth (that I could no longer work in a full time job due to chronic health problems).
I am learning about being present and in the moment. This makes me enjoy the task in front of me or the person I am speaking to.
I reaiise that I’m no longer sure what success or failure is… all we can do is do and be, and later we look back and see what really happened… and it’s rarely failure…
Hindsight is 20/20 but it sometimes wears rose colored glasses. The only person who doesn’t fail is the person who never tries.
You are so right. Without trying there can be no learning and learning is a product of falling some time.
Valerie, I know the feeling. One of the benefits of maturity or getting older is we get to understand those things in a different light.
It helps too, to know yourself well, to know what you are capable of doing, and not to follow your dream when it is unrealistic. Thank you so much, Ivon, for introducing me to Pahari’s blog. It is really a fine place to read.
You are welcome Shimon. I am glad you enjoyed Pahari’s blog.