I felt a touch of sadness the last few days of school. I think it goes back to my first year teaching. The students told me they wanted school to continue into the summer. My last year teaching students sent me off with the message it was not the content that was meaningful, but the life lessons they learned.
Etymologically, anarchy comes from repeatedly new beginnings. Thought of that way, each new beginning is an opportunity to dance.
Rumi said “We rarely hear the inward music, but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless,
directed by the one who teaches us, the pure joy of the sun, our music master.” New beginnings are a dance that we do not always hear the music to.
As an end draws near,
Beginnings emerge,
In the anarchy of living.
One is drawn,
Not by the familiar,
By mystery.
In silent moments,
Stillness calls,
Reaching deep into one’s soul.
In silent moments,
The unseen radiates,
Touching one’s spirit.
Mystery lurks,
Pointing the way,
Deep wonder draws one forward.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
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 
Are you retiring? I loved the poem having started a new path in March scary but fun. Enjoy
I retired from teaching 4 years ago to complete my PhD. I am trying to figure out what the next step is now that I am grown up. It is, as you say, scary and fun.
OK I must have read it wrong. It is all about living and being happy have a great week.
When I was teaching I had mixed feelings at the end of each year. I was ready for summer and a break from school but also sad to see a year end and my students move on.
I think that is the paradox of teaching at this time of the year.
Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
Congratulations, and Good luck. Students need teachers like you. Greetings, Michael
Thanks for offering redemption to the modern Anarchists. The ones I have met only seem intent on breaking all. History and tradition are only so much garbage carried forth. There is no intention to substitute or to begin a-new. What will replace the void they create? The answer is a predictable shirk of the shoulder.
I agree. Every time I hear the word anarchist in a modern context, I recall Levinas’ work. He contended it was an ethical way of being in the world.