Category Archives: Education

Learning is the Thing for You

Posted on February 6, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I told students, when I learned something new, I was going home to tell my wife. I unsure they believed me, but, often, I would go home and tell Kathy what I had learned or a particular frustration from the day. Often, the latter led to learning.

T. H. White, in this excerpt from The Once and Future King, suggests learning is a universal solvent for what ails us at any given moment. It distracts us from worrisome, sad, and fearful things focuses on something right here in the present moment. It occupies our minds, fills our bodies, and feeds the soul of our being.

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn… “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss you only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then–to learn. Learn why the world ways and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured, never fear or distrust, and never dream regretting. Learning is the thing for you.”

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Posted in 21st Century Education, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, education, leadership, Mindful Practice, school, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Once and Future King. Bookmark the permalink.

Landscape Survey

Posted on February 4, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I chose a metaphor about 21st Century learning being similar to a living topography in my writing to date, which is different from the flat world view of some i.e. Thomas Friedman.

There is definitely more information available in our world and it comes at us much faster, but my view is one that of textured and layered world and not flat. This uses the etymological roots of topic linked to topikas and topos. In this sense, we engage topics which are alive and there multiple meanings continually emerge, one for each person in the learning environment.

I am challenged by the thought my understanding is not the only one that applies. I only need to turn to nature and see what John Brehm pointed out in this poem. I constantly survey landscapes as communally a better world hopefully emerges, not through a unified understanding, but one diversely rich and humane. I am called to remember others see things from a particular and unique perspective that is their own, not mine.

And what about this boulder,

knocked off the mountain top and

tumbled down a thousand years ago

to lodge against the stream bank,

does it waste itself with worry

about how things are going

to turn out? Does the current

slicing around it stop itself mid-

stream because it can’t get past

all it’s left behind back at

the source or up in the clouds

where its waters first fell

to earth? And these trees,

would they double over and

clutch themselves or lash out

furiously if they were to discover

what the other trees really

thought of them? Would the wind

reascend into the sky forever,

like an in-drawn breath,

if it knew it was fated simply

to sweep the earth of windlessness,

to touch everything and keep

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Posted in 21st Century Education, Community, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, education, John Brehm, Landscape Survey, leadership, Leadership. Servant-Leadership, Mindful Practice, nature, poetry, servant-leadership, teacher as transformer, Thomas Friedman. Bookmark the permalink.

The Bridge

Posted on January 31, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

As I write or is the verb dissertate, two early themes emerge: bridges and the ecological nature of classroom. In learning, there is an ongoing bridging from place to place, from time to time, from subject to subject, and from you me and back again.

A bridge we forget is one that takes inside our self. Learning is constant transforming. We are always changing yet we are rarely aware of change. It is like a fish in water, it just happens.

It is important to be mindful and present in learning. What are the changes? What does this bridge between you and me change in each of us? We never become one and it is in the in-between spaces on those bridges that we find the newness of our self when we linger.

Octavio Paz’s poem reminds me of bridges that fill learning spaces, an ecology of learning. There is a rainbow in, over, and between learning as I learn who I am, the world I live in, and the beings I share that world with.

Between now and now,
between I am and you are,
the word bridge.

Entering it
you enter yourself:
the world connects
and closes like a ring.

From one bank to another,
there is always
a body stretched:
a rainbow.
I’ll sleep beneath its arches.

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Posted in Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, education, leadership, Mindful Practice, Octavio Paz, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Bridge. Bookmark the permalink.

Riding Lesson

Posted on January 24, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I learned two things
from an early riding teacher.
He held a nervous filly
in one hand and gestured
with the other, saying “Listen.
Keep one leg on one side,
the other leg on the other side,
and your mind in the middle.”

He turned and mounted.
She took two steps, then left
the ground, I thought for good.
But she came down hard, humped
her back, swallowed her neck,
and threw her rider as you’d
throw a rock. He rose, brushed
his pants and caught his breath,
and said, “See that’s the way
to do it. When you see
they’re gonna throw you, get off.”

I came across a new poem today and the message reminded me of being in the classroom. Yesterday, I read an article about things students remember teachers for and they are relational i.e. humour, kindness, compassion, a good listener, etc.

Kathy comments I was a good junior high teacher, because I am an overgrown adolescent. In that way, I retained a sense of humour about the learning I did with kids. When I messed up, similar to the last lines of this Henry Taylor poem, I would often say, “I planned it that way.” Over time, the students would respond in kind.

We learn because we get up, dust ourselves off, and get back to living our lives. In French, the word for experiment is expérience and life is that. Life is unpredictable with its twists, turns, and we will be bucked off metaphorically and it is richer when experienced fully. Humour and forgiving ourselves when we fall off are important. Kindness begins at home with us and extends outwards.

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Posted in Education, Humour, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, education, Henry Taylor, Mindful Practice, poetry, Riding Lesson, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

The Irony of American

Posted on January 21, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I could have taken the following from any history. It transcends borders. I was unaware that Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the Serenity Prayer.

I chose this passage as it resonated with my writing today and it was the first page I turned to in the book of poetry I used today. What resonated with me was in my writing I draw on the work of John Dewey, Alfred North Whitehead, Plato, and others. The first two lines about hope provide a people with hope. What does it mean to be educated in the 21st Century? This question is partly premised on what it meant to be educated in earlier times. The context of Dewey and Whitehead was in the shadow of the Industrial Revolution. Horace Mann and Thomas Jefferson wrote in the shadow of the American Revolution. The rapid change of their times can give us faith that we will figure out what it means to be educated in these times.

I do not outline well. I get to writing, but, with a dissertation, I have to try outline so I have broken it up a bit. Today, I wrote part of the introductory chapter and sent it to Kathy to make it makes sense. In that I have hope and faith that love will save me.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime;

therefore, we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense

in any immediate context of history;

therefore, we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;

therefore we are saved by love.

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Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged Alfred North Whitehead, creativity, education, John Dewey, leadership, Mindful Practice, Plato, poetry, Reinhold Niebuhr, teacher as transformer, The Irony of American History. Bookmark the permalink.

Sweet is the Oneness

Posted on January 19, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

I just finished writing the first draft of a short paper on complexity and the teacher’s practice. Much of this is not new. A classroom has the potential to become a community. It is about the needs of each student within a classroom and their personal lived histories. Around that community has the potential to emerge. I cannot plan for it. I can wish for it. Community grows out of the livingness of our lives when we linger on bridges that link us and we while away time in those moments. This is different then when someone chooses a team with a specific goal in mind.

Those are not my thoughts. I added to the thinking of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Max van Manen, David Jardine, and Ted Aoki. I found complexity is something we have talked about throughout history, yet we it treat like it is new. I looked for a poem that fit my writing. The first poet that appeared was Rumi and he led me to this beautiful poem about the oneness of community.

If ten lamps are in one place,

each differs in form from another;

yet you can’t distinguish whose radiance is whose when you focus on the light.

In the field of spirit there is no division; no individuals exist.

Sweet is the oneness of the Friend with His friends.

Catch hold of spirit.

Help this headstrong self disintegrate;

that beneath it you may discover unity,

like a buried treasure.

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Posted in Community, Education, Learning Organizations, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged community, creativity, David Jardine, education, Hans-Georg Gadamer, leadership, Max van Manen, Mindful Practice, poetry, Rumi, servant-leadership, Sweet is the Oneness, teacher as transformer, Ted Aoki. Bookmark the permalink.

Dream Boogie

Posted on January 4, 2014 by ivonprefontaine

Stony Creek, where I taught for almost 15 years, was a special place. It does not exist other than in name only. It was a place where parents, students, and educators met and learned together. It was a place that defied the way ‘traditional schooling’ was done. The goal was to meet each child where they were in their learning and not force the child to fit the learning. For most of the time I was there, I taught and learned (those are not inseparable if we allow them to emerge together) in a way I could only dream possible. For those years, the dream was not deferred. It was real, but fragile as all dreams are.

I enjoy Langston Hughes and his wonderful poetry. Each year, I chose a poem or two from his wonderful writing and shared it with the students. I found that if I share my passion for learning and what excited me in my learning students and parents reciprocated. We lived and learned in community not in school. This is one of the poems I shared from that place.

Good morning, daddy!

Ain’t you heard

The boogie-woogie rumble

Of a dream deferred?

Listen closely:

You’ll hear their feet

Beating out and Beating out a —

You think

It’s a happy beat?

Listen to it closely:

Ain’t you heard

something underneath

like a —

What did I say?

Sure,

I’m happy!

Take it away!

Hey, pop!

Re-bop!

Mop!

Y-e-a-h!

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Posted in Education, Learning Organizations, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, Dream Boogie, Langston Hughes, Mindful Practice, poetry, Progressive Education, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Children

Posted on December 22, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

This is my first Christmas not teaching, but I think of what it means to be in the classroom frequently and the impact adults have on children. Children are nature’s gift. They are the future and need to be nurtured and cherished in that respect. Christmas is a time we can remember the gifts we sometimes take for granted for the rest of the year. It is a time to pause and recall the reason for the season. It was a particularly important gift brought to us in the form of a child that we can see and understand in the form of our children.

Children–

Nature’s gift;

Craft and hone–

Appreciate their future;

Nurture and cherish–

Under watchful gaze mature,

Cradled in loving community.

Elders shepherd;

Care and tend–

A most precious flock

Share wise words

Open hearts

Act prudently

Generous, ceaseless, joyful work

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Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged children, Christmas, community, creativity, education, Mindful Practice, poetry, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

East Coker

Posted on October 7, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

As I write, I am beginning to see learning as based on hermeneutics. We learn the world by reading it. We learn about our self by turning in and listening. In all this, we observe and hopefully find meaning. It could be in the form of words, images, and is just as easily what is left out. T. S. Eliot reminds us of the challenges of learning language and finding meaning them in. We learn, unlearn, relearn all in cyclical fashion. We read the world and try to make new sense of it with each iteration as we move back and forth between the whole and the parts to make sense of either. It might seem all a waste, but perhaps it is not.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years–

Twenty years largely wasted, the years l’entre deux guerres

Trying to use words, and every attemp

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

To emulate–but there is no competition–

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again; and now, under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss

For us, there is only the trying, The rest is not our business.

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Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, East Coker, education, hermeneutics, leadership, Mindful Practice, T. S. Eliot, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Making Peace

Posted on September 29, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

Denise Levertov wrote this wonderful and I think it is a good way to bring my week to an end as I head to Sabbath. Stephen at Grow Mercy posted this earlier and I did try to share it with those who follow my blog. It did not make it over and this was the next best thing I could do to get it to you folks. Take a moment and visit Stephen’s blog.

I used a lesson plan with my students where we talked about a culture of war and a culture of peace. They had to describe each one and we did them separately. We have many more words that come to mind when we talk about peace. I filled whiteboard, they would share for an hour, be disappointed when it was over, and the quiet ones were always present. There is a presence in peace. The students ran out of ways to describe a culture of war very quickly.

A voice from the dark called out,

“The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.”

But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice

syntax of mutual aid.

A feeling towards it,