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.
Imagine all the people, living life in peace.You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one. Source: Peace Begins With Peaceful Actions – Lion’s Roar
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
Good luck with that. Not everyone is interested in peace, hence, the world we live in. It has always been this way. Always. Earliest man was dug up and had head wounds from the only other guy alive. Love the song. John is no longer with us…another person who didn’t want peace took his life. Vegas…another man who didn’t believe in peace. Don’t see it happening. Been here a long time…unless a cataclysmic even takes place, it’s going to be same old, same old. Hate, injustice, bigotry, racism, sexism, and all the other isms are alive and well, living in America. It’s all about greed, power over others and hatred. It’s horrifying. Songs, prayers, whatever, not going to change the people filled with hatred. The guy who did Vegas is just one more guy. How do you change people like that. We can’t even get along with each other because of religious and political beliefs. Our country/world glorifies violence. Statues are built for the conquerors, not the peace makers. When you think that by believe things will be okay, or that people will suddenly change by magic, or that praying will help fix what’s wrong, you simply can’t help anyone. It’s like saying, I love you to a drug addict and thinking that will make them stope doing drugs. Actions are the only thing that ever change anything in society. Quietly sitting in a room hoping and wishing does nothing. I’m sorry. People in the street make changes, or they used to. Things have changed and no one in government cares about the people any longer. But seriously, if people don’t act, things will stay the same. You’re a teacher. If your students just sit there hoping for good grades but do absolutely nothing concrete to GET them, they will fail. This is exactly the same thing. You can wish for whatever you like, a car, a home, a friend, but unless you do something to get what you want, well…not going to happen. Wishing without action is useless.
You are right that not everyone is interested in peace. They might say they are. It begins with those closest to us and how we conduct ourselves.
I tried teaching in a way that promoted peace through words and actions. How each spoke to each other and how we treated each other was essential to healthy relationships. I emphasized we did not have to agree with one another. We had to listen and share in respectful ways. If I fail to do, then I have failed the next generation.
You are right. We have to act and speak in ways that get us beyond the mere wishing.
I think you are a lovely person. You see people differently than I do. If people fail, in spite of what you do, it is not your fault. Some people are simply tuned into a different wavelength. You can’t change people who don’t want to be changed. You can’t imagine that all of us will ever want the same thing, no matter how we imagine that that would be a good thing (we don’t actually know). Even in a remote village where everyone got along beautifully…the law thee was that if someone admired something you had…you gave it to them. When questioned by anthropologists, who were living with the tribe, the people were resentful and hated those who they were forced to give their tools to but they felt it only right because there were so few of them left that if they killed each other, they would die out. So, they were not happy people who got along with each other at all. I truly don’t think it’s possible and we are not in any way responsible for what others do. Yes, we can be loving and kind but that’s not always the answer. Yes, we can reach out but we can’t be disappointed when that doesn’t change a thing. We don’t actually understand how we work, what we truly are, or why we are here. We don’t understand how the brain actually works. The monks in Tibet are lovely and they are dying as they stand in front of guns and get killed. Their choice. It’s all about choices. You could talk to me for days and I won’t believe in religion. Not going to happen. It wouldn’t be your failure, it’s who I am and has nothing to do with the people around me. That’s why we can’t change things. Look how women are treated in America. Raped on campus and in the streets, in their homes, beaten, tortured and murdered by strangers and people they know and sometimes love. WE CAN’T STOP IT FROM HAPPENING. It’s not OUR fault. We try. We never stop trying. Setting up shelters, doing what we can but IT NEVER ENDS BECAUSE MEN LIKE RAPING AND BEATING AND TORTURING AND KI9LLING WOMEN/ As for praying, priest pray all the time and they are rapists and liars. People still go to church so why should they change. If catholics really elided that raping children was wrong the pews would be empty and no one would give the church money for lawyers. They don’t care about the kids who committed suicide, the kids who will never be okay. They still support the priests…so tell me about right and wrong, justice and injustice. Tell me about how loving kindness and doing the right thing will change anything. It won’t. People do what they want to do and because of that, this is how we live. You can be kind to your neighbor but I can name many women who were raped by their nice neighbors when they were children. So, who you think you’re interacting with might not be the person he seems to be. That’s how life is for women and children. Every single day. Being nice can get you killed. Being nice can be misinterpreted as something else. Being nice is a good idea but unrealistic in so many ways. Pleasantness and civility is lovely but it masks what’s underneath that veneer. I am no longer an activist, and the new generation doesn’t seem to be doing that much but we worked so hard and women are still earning less them men. My granddaughter and her boyfriend got hired at the same place at the same time and she gets fifty cents an hour less than he does. She asked the other girls who work where she does and they ALL get paid fifty cents less for doing the exact same job. It NEVER ENDS. I’ve sung, chanted, danced, marched, screamed, yelled, marched some more, went to Washington more times than I’d like to admit, written newsletters, petitions, went door to door again and again, worked for candidates and here we are…same old, same old. Now they are attacking Roe vs Wad AGAIN, because no one cares if women die. Women aren’t supposed to have sex and that’s their punishment. Dead girls, dead women. Men decide that. How fair is that? Try being nice the guy in the white house, try talking him out of starting a war with Korea, when he can’t seen anything but himself in the mirror and lives in a world that is make-believe. The people who elected him are still wearing the confederate flag and loading their guns. LOLOLOL If so many people weren’t suffering I’d think this was one big, stupid joke.
I agree with you. As a teacher, I did not feel responsible for my students’ learning. I was responsible for my teaching, which was on feedback loop with their learning.
Canada is different than the US in many ways. We have racism. It is more subtle and harder to detect. I don’t think it makes it better. It makes it different.
Some days I do not even know where to begin. The essential part is to continue and try correct some of those questions you raise. I reshape questions. I tell people I am pro-choice, which includes the right to choose to carry a child to birth. The idea of pro-choice or pro-life is a false dichotomy. By reshaping questions, I can respect the right of another to their choice on a deeply personal issue. I am not a woman, so I have not experienced giving birth, being raped, being molested, etc. I cannot choose for something I have not experienced. For me, peaceful protest is a quiet way of questioning. I don’t know if I make a difference, but I keep thinking I can.
It’s time for the peaceniks, the warmongers had had their time.
Hugs
Hugs back. I remember a conversation with my mother where I told I was opposed to war. She asked why and I answered: “I am opposed to killing in general. It is one of the commandments.”
With you on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpajoF4Uyew ❤
Thank you. It is one of my favourite songs from my younger days.
I’m beginning to think that peace will occur only when I get to the other side. in this world, people like to disagree too much for there to be peace.
I hope that is not the only time. Disagreeing is OK. It is how we disagree with each other. Do we respect the dignity of the other person and do we consider what they say.
“Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” Peace in our hearts, love in action. Timely post. Appreciated very much.
Thank you Carrie. It always begins with me. We cannot expect something of others if we do not walk our talk.
Indeed…in everything.
We are falling apart at the seams. Perhaps when we break open we will all see the light. Peace 🙏
Val, I do not remember the book, but Parker Palmer speaks of the same approach. It is when we are broken and acknowledge it that the light has an opportunity to seep in.
Yes, peace. I believe there is an archetypal Peacekeeper, yet there is also the Warrior. And both reside within our human nature. Integration of Shadow breaches the divide, but I’m not sure most humans are up to the work. Aloha, Ivon.
You hit on an essential to peace Bela. It takes great effort.
Timely and something we all should take into our hearts.
We should and manifest with outstretched arms.