Several asked asked several times what I would do after the end of the school year. There is no set plan, but we spent a fair amount of time on the weekend beginning a website and some design of a logo for my next adventure. This is an opportunity to continue with several loves: learning, writing, and try make a difference, albeit a small one in the world. There is no certainty of where it takes us. Unlike the bureaucracies I tangled with my entire adult life, this is an opportunity to, as Robert Frost said, “take the road less traveled.” Where I go will not be planned out, but will be an opportunity to make a mark on the trail that others might find and follow.
I get to do this with Kathy. She is much sharper than I am when it comes to the details of a website, planning a logo, and setting the direction the first steps need to take. I get to combine a number of things I love deeply in this new adventure.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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 
I have always loved that poem. Good luck with the website!
It is beautiful. I use it every year with students to get them thinking about what the future might hold and to follow their dreams.
How perfect, Ivan!
Great poem. Frost is certainly a master. I pray all goes well in your journey.
He certainly was. Thank you for the kind words Tony.
I’m sure all will go well on the new journey, whatever direction you travel.
You sound like the sort of person who is open to new challenges and new experiences and that is the important thing in life (in general). When we open ourselves up to whatever comes our way, we allow ourselves the joy of exploration and opportunities.
If one is closed and has fixed expectations, one turns possibilities into pre-ordained probabilities.
Personally, I like to know that the future is always open.
Good luck with the rest of the school year.
Thank you for the wonderful comment Vicki. I have wonderful support from those close and feel the same thing from this blogging community.
Good luck on journey Ivon. Look forward to hearing and seeing more
I will be sharing David.
“…Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both..” isn’t this a little cure that we face every day. You stand there and you know you have to pick your journey.
It makes us better, it makes us wiser and makes us stronger. Once we look into our hearts and give ourselves an honest answer, we know where our journey will take us.
And, even we don’t know where it will take us, we have confidence in taking the next step.
Decisions decisions. 🙂
Love the poem. All the best for your new direction and your new website.
Thank you Elizabeth.
I am sure many echo my view that I look forward to reading about your next journey..
I look forward to sharing it with others Mimi. This has been such a creative and life-affirming space.
What a perfectly lovely poem to make the beginning of your new adventure! Best of luck! Enjoy the journey!
Thank you on many levels Carrie.
The path to the rainbow will come with many detours, all a delight to behold. We hope to accompany you and Kathy on a few of those detours.
We will look forward to it.
Hmph! The road less travelled would likely describe my attempts to further my education at this point! lol 😉 Having just successfully completed one course in maths I was all set to continue along the English road…at least I was until they informed me I was too advanced for that course and couldn’t do it…grrrrRRR….and they don’t run higher level courses…GRRRRRRRR!!! I think they just don’t like me lol 😉 So now I don’t know where to go next on my journey…this road is not at all well travelled for Wolfie…I tried my best to fail the assessment for this course to ensure I’d get on it and it still came out too high – this is a 1st for moi! I am very bored! Kingston college is the nearest possibility and that is not a good road to travel either…out of my area and a very long and expensive road to travel! lol so…for now the road less travelled of choice would seem to be the Russian language route!! A very overgrown and difficult to negotiate road I might add! Meanwhile…Tutor bashing comes to mind as a good gap-filler timewise! Gotta blame somebody for this unfortunate turn of events!!! 🙂
I have this poem taped to my office door, and can recite it..:) I hope your new website goes great!
Thank you. It is such a great poem that says so much in so few words.
We are pretty confident, but the work has only begun.
All the best with your new journey, new season. And too, the roads already travelled help us along the less travelled, sometimes recusant, road ahead.
Thank you Stephen. Yes, the past does inform the future if I listen carefully with my heart.
Good luck in your future turn in the road of life.
Thank you Alex.