RSS Feed

450. A flash of harmless lightning, a mist of rainbow dyes, the burnished sunbeams brightening from flower to flower he flies. ~John B. Tabb

I finished a book by David Geoffrey Smith yesterday. The last chapter is about giving gifts as pedagogic practice. When giving gifts without expectation of return, the return is the gift itself and the joy it brings in the giving. As a teacher, I was happiest when students tore into their learning with gusto. I felt best and the return was immediate and often unexpected when the students reveled in the work.

Sacred Touches

a day of dreams
the garden and the hummingbird
float on my breath
~Haiku by Larry Gates

Screen shot 2014-08-07 at 4.36.04 PM

Gift

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over the honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw blue sea and sails.

~By Czeslaw Milosz

You (Lord) have put gladness in my heart… ~Psalm 4:7a   ✝

Sweet Jesus, fill us with the mercy you bled on the cross and draw us back unto Yourself! Thank You for the gladness You put in our hearts. Help us to be aware of You in all that we see and hear in Creation’s…

View original post 4 more words

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.

4 responses »

  1. Loved the photograph and the haiku. Haiku’s are not as easy as many believe. To capture that right feeling. Loved this one.

    Reply
  2. Thank you so much for the reblog. Blessings, Natalie 🙂

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: