I have not walked much lately due to time constraints. Nature is a place that allows me to learn about myself and create. Kathy and I spent a lot of time there last spring, summer, and fall. I struggle to write when I am not spending time walking. Today, we had a tornado watch and warning. As I drove home, the sky was dark to the north and east. Lightening flashed across the sky. I was reminded of the power nature holds and, at the same time, its healing touch as a creative source. I am not separate from it. I am a small piece.
This place–
It is a space,
I walk with purpose;
Yet, without purpose
There is no destination here.
The ground uplifts,
The sky shelters,
Breezes cool,
Leaves whisper secrets,
The Sun reveals.
Just be…
Be one;
Not above
Not below
I am integral.
A refuge
Nature`s wisdom shared
I am comforted
I heal
Just be.
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 
I love the healing place! Lovely poem!
Thank you Michelle.
🙂
The awareness of being integral is valuable in many ways…lovely poem.
Thank you.