A Smile To Remember – Charles Bukowski.
Charles Bukowski is a poet who uses wit, sarcasm, and everyday experience, good and bad, to catch my attention. In this poem, domestic violence is the topic he explored.
I don’t know if he was a product of this violence, but he provides an insight that is perhaps a survivor’s insight and poses a question that needs exploring.
What do we notice in life? Is it the trivial things? Or, is it the major things? What happens in a child’s life when she/he live in violence? What can we each do to reach out and touch the lives of those living in violence? Perhaps, it is a smile to remember making 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
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
Oh, he was a tough one…in a weak moment he revealed his “Bluebird”
He was a tough one, but wrote in a way that catches my eye.
Sometimes, we don’t know unless verify it from different parties.
It is hard to negotiate the terrain for sure. Sometimes, as you suggest, it is not what it seems to be.
He certainly knew how to paint graphic images with words. I can’t get that one out of my mind.
He was a most graphic writer and the imagery is provoking.
He did a good job in playing himself in the movie.
That was probably necessary. Who else could play such a character?
Dark. Spare. Powerful.
That is a great description Emilie.
The home environment for a child is so important as it sets the stage for their actions in the future. I was so fortunate to have loving parents and never knew how other children lived. Later I learned of friends receiving beatings and maybe worst of all, being told they were not wanted. These grow into adults who have a depressing attitude toward the world and treat their families poorly. Some can’t even pretend to smile.
It does. For 15 years, I taught in a setting where parents, students, and teachers were active partners in the education of each student. Towards the end, administrators took away the voice of parents and teachers to try create an adversarial relationship. Prior to this, we were quite effective and each student thrived in their unique own way. I visited homes and understood the relationships that emerged in those homes and worked actively to support parents and students so they could succeed and thrive in their relationships.