I finished my course work last night and head home Monday where I will continue the dissertation process. What is ahead is as uncertain as what I faced when I arrived at Gonzaga in June 2008. At the time, I envisioned me in a classroom, teaching and finishing this work during summer months.
I cannot predict what lies ahead and even the most immediate step tests new ground. When I look back, there is no going back. I see memories, frail and wispy, more distant in each ensuing moment.
Antonio Machado reminds me the journey is not planned with absolutism. It emerges anew in each step which is never re-traceable. I used the line “walking you make the road” in my last course paper describing teaching not as planned, mandated work, but as in-between spaces, ecotones, Teachers and student live those plans out in their real lives.
I look forward to going home, but know this place and these people, after 10 months living here, leave imprints. They offer spaces ‘regular’ life does not always. There is no going back on what I learned, knowing it shapes my path.
Walker, your footsteps
are the road, and nothing more.
Walker, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
Walking you make the road,
and turning to look behind
you see the path you never
again will step upon.
Walker, there is no road,
only foam trails on the sea.
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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 and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
A beautiful poem and so true. We can look back to where we came from but cannot go back the same way – we see only foam trails on the sea. Congratulations to you on completing the course work!
Thank you.
Good luck with the next step
Thank you Robert.
I’m sure there are many amazing surprises and joys waiting for you- the scary part is not knowing what they are!
That is so true. The mystery is an important feature in living life.
I think we cannot help but be changed by what we see and do, as well as by all the influences (as in people) with whom we come in contact. Ten months is a prolonged ‘influential moment.’ However, I am a firm believer that roots remain to blend with this new persona, and serves as the anchor of who you are.
I agree Marie. Even when we think that we are unchanged, each encounter makes a small, often unnoticed difference in who we are and who we are becoming.
Nice poem, thanks for sharing. Dissertation? Congrats on getting that far!
Thank you Bela.
I pray all goes well with your dissertation process! Blessings, Natalie 🙂
I thank you for the thoughts and prayers Natalie.
Good Luck to you, Ivon!
Thank you.
So great the people we meet on our paths in life – weather long-term or temporary. (Although – some I could have done without…) 🙂
It is and we can. We never know who we will meet and that is the beauty and risk.