Accept Yourself.
In a highly materialistic and competitive world, it is hard sometimes to accept who we are. My reading and writing has taken me on a detour through this as I explore what teaching means to teachers in their forming identities. There is an essential part of who we are that often goes unexplored. We often reduce to what we do, how we do it, and why we do it, but rarely let the who be revealed.
It is almost Seuss-like with the question “Who is the who that teaches or lives this life?” When we slow down and move from moment to moment, it allows us to speak to our self and listen more deeply. This conversation is a rich and deep requiring stillness and mindfulness that the busyness of daily life often prohibits. When we slow down, we touch the essential spirit of who we are without completely knowing the answer. The questions we ask open space for living and creativity.
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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.
Teacher as Transformer 
Funny, Ivon, I asked who are we observing,
If we visualize us watching a rerun of ourselves from last week, a mundane scene,
Now step back and see you watching that TV.
Who are you watching.
Watching the watcher
Is that guy on the couch the vaunted “ego”,
“I”,
Me
As being what we do or describing teacher or student, that is judgment
Happy inhabits a space where judgment ceases and emptiness steps out.
It is better to show up empty and share your wisdom in that space, in my opinion.
Letting go, let’s the ego fade enough, as waiting for the mud to settle, allows answers to arrive, freely
Letting go is a difficult thing to do. We become wrapped in thinking we are our possessions and roles. Your point about teacher and student is a good one. Teaching is leaning. Learning is teaching. They are inseperable.
Letting go,
We have an average of 60,000’thoughts a day, one a second, some tied to strong emotions, mix in our doubts, worries and unworthiness and the chatter is incessant.
The ability to develop enough focus to empty the mind and slow it down is not easy.
For someone with high intelligence, it is even more difficult. Me identify with our intelligence, our smarts.
We value our ability, our supposed power to much. Here in lies many of the teacher and learner barriers.
A spiritual teacher occupies a different space than a say teacher, paid and decorated in our school system.
It is a challenging task. I agree that the concept of teacher is different in the secular world than it is in the spiritual world. Having said this, I think we have separated the two and that may be a part of the issue.
May I say, that we need more teachers like you, Ivon.
Thank you Marty.
Yea, we are living in a fast paced environment.
We do and it takes a will to slow down.
Indeed
In the fast changing world, it can be hard to accept who we are. Thank you for the reminder, Ivon!
You are welcome Amy.
“..When we slow down and move from moment to moment, it allows us to speak to our self and listen more deeply..” I wish that was true for people. Some people are so immersed in their “I am a victim” thinking that they have no idea what it means to hear themselves.
We do become immersed in various forms of thinking that deny us the moment-to-moment living .
So very true. We do not take enough time as a 1st world member to stop and just BE and let our spirit commune with our mind, if we just would oh the things that would change. Thank you Ivon for this piece. Love, Sheri
Thank you Sheri for a wonderful comment.
😊
Yes, yes, yes!
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
WOO-HOO….WOULD LOVE TO….BUT WHO AM I ??? 🙂
Thank you for the re-blog and comment Jonathan.
ORT-ORT !
GOOD POINT–I AGREE. And few there are who take the time to slow down and find out who they are….like you have. 🙂
I find it is always an incomplete knowing. I am always finding out something new about the person I am becoming.
Me too! (Fancy that! 😀 )
Thanks Ivon – you state it well. We so often in our own fast pace of life run right past ourself. We need a time of reflection each day.
You are welcome Bill.
I agree with Mary. We definitely need more teachers like you!
Thank you Jennifer.
Marty, its early.:)
It is.