Category Archives: Education

Delight in Disorder

Posted on September 20, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

Dissertation topics emerge, move to the fore, sink back, and are always a process. Mine is no different. I found material this week on the way K-12 curriculum comes to be. One of the books is about a post-modernist perspective on curriculum. Teachers and students co-create the learning within a matrix or frame provided. There is no expectation of clear and definable products at the beginning. Learning is messy. It is a rich conversation.

Robert Herrick, an 18th English poet, provided a metaphor for learning with a rushed dressing of a person, in this case a young woman. Learning is an art, an imprecise art which requires mistakes along the way and continuous refining that is never quite finished. It seems to get better with time. In that disorder, learners and teachers merge.

A sweet disorder in the dress

Kindles in clothes a wantonness:

A lawn about the shoulders thrown

Into a fine distraction,

An erring lace, which here and there

Enthrals the crimson stomacher,

A cuff neglectful, and thereby

Ribbands to flow confusedly,

A winning wave (deserving note)

In the tempestuous petticoat,

A careless shoe-string, in whose tie

I see wild civility,

Do more bewitch me, then when art is

Is too precise in very part.

20 Comments

Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged conversational journey, creativity, Delight in Disorder, education, Mindful Practice, poetry, Robert Herrick, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Throw Yourself Like Seed

Posted on September 12, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I spent a good part of the afternoon writing based on a book by Ralph Siu, The Tao of Science. I wrote and broadened the scope to include the Tao of Technology and the Tao of Learning or Education. I grabbed a couple of other books because words like communion and humility came up in relationship to leadership. I refer to Educating for Humanity a lot. and it is one of my most well-used books. An article had this beautiful poem about life`s abundance by Miguel de Unamuno. The way (the Tao) I look at life and my perception is one which is life-giving or not. I think this holds in terms of my interactions with other beings. Life is not separated into fragments but lived wholly and fully with reverence.

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;

sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate

that brushes your heel as it turns by,

the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now your are only giving food to that final pain

which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,

but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts

is work; start again to turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,

don`t turn your face that would be turn to it to death,

and do not let the past weight upon your motion.

Leave what`s alive in the furrow, what`s dead in yourself,

for life does not move in the same as a group of clouds;

from your work you will be able to gather yourself.

15 Comments

Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, education, Miguel de Unamuno, Mindful Practice, poetry, Ralph Siu, science, teacher as transformer, The Tao, Throw Yourself Like Seed. Bookmark the permalink.

Being a Bee

Posted on September 9, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I commented on How to Land about Eco Ethics. The underlying principle is deep ecology which shifts us from an environmental anthropocentric and views all living beings as having inherent worth and not merely instrumental value. Deep ecology understand a complex interdependence between all living beings and allows that to guide decision-making. We are part of the Earth and not holding dominion over it in this sense. We can make similar decisions about harvesting, mining, and building as we do but use numerous perspectives in doing so.

James Hatley wrote, The Uncanny Goodness of Being Edible to Bears. He referred to hunters, outdoors people, and survivors of bear attacks. People, who are deep ecologists, revere Nature and understand the risks of entering wilderness. Their view is Nature and what it holds makes us more human and complete, as we are one with Nature and not separate.

I wrote this poem as one way to better understand the concept myself.

Am I more than the sum of parts?

More than just a body, a mind, a spirit?

If so, what role might the bee play?

The one who manufactured honey?

The one I so enjoyed with bread today.

Is he or she part of me?

Or, is there even more to it than that?

What about the clover?

The water and other things used in delectable manufacture?

Can I now take that Bee’s perspective?

Ever so fleetingly,

Does it make a difference?

Might it be a lesson in being more human?

Letting the Bee be part of me?

10 Comments

Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, Deep Ecology, Eco Ethics, eloquent questions, James Hatfield, Mindful Practice, nature, philosophy, spirituality, teacher as transformer, The Uncanny Goodness of Being Edible to Bears. Bookmark the permalink.

How to Own Land

Posted on September 7, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

It has been a hectic week and I finished the first week of being a full-time student. My body and mind know this and are telling me it is time to have Sabbath.

I enjoyed the classes this week and they are an eclectic mix: The Tao of Leadership, Eco Ethics and Leadership, and Leadership, Language , and Culture.

In the Eco Ethics class. we talked about challenges faced by humans as we deal with environmental issues from largely a human driven perspective and agenda. It is about ownership and domination in large part and our thinking has to shift. As my figurative dad, Albert Einstein (wild hair, facial foliage, and eccentric behaviour according to students) said, “We cannot solve problems with the same thinking that got us into those problems.”

I came across this poem that shifted the perspective from humans being outside nature to being part of nature. I used a short story with students written by Leo Tolstoy called How Much Land Does a Man Need? Tolstoy challenged the notion of ownership as we understand it in the ‘advanced world’. Morgan Farley’s message is gentler and takes on the perspective of others living in the world with us, not separate from us.

Find a spot and sit there

until the grass begins

to nose between your thighs.

Climb to the top

of a pine and drink

the wind’s green breath.

Track the stream through alder and scrub,

trade speech

for that cold sweet babble.

Gather sticks and spin them into fire.

Watch the smoke spiral into darkness.

Dream that animals find you.

They weave your hair into warm cloth,

string your teeth on necklaces,

wrap your skin soft around their feet.

Wake to the silence

of your own scattered bones.

Watch them whiten in the sun.

When they have fallen to powder

and blown away,

the land will be yours.

19 Comments

Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged Albert Einstein, creativity, education, Ethics, Gonzaga, How to Own Land, Leo Tolstoy, Mindful Practice, Morgan Farley, nature, spirituality, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

The Thought-Fox

Posted on August 25, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I used this poem with students to explain the source of poetic inspiration. It is probably already there and sneaks out to find literary life and expression. Ted Hughes described the creative process of poetry writing as an animal quietly emerging and appearing.

I will sit, close my eyes, and write each day in my journal. Perhaps, a thought-fox will creep out of the shrubbery of imagination. Sabbath is a good time to start.

I imagine this midnight movement’s forest;

Something else is alive

Beside the clock’s loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no stars:

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,

A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;

Two eyes serve a moment, that now

And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow,

Between trees, and wearily a lame

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow

Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,

Brilliantly, concentratedly,

Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.

8 Comments

Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged creativity, education, Mindful Practice, nature, poetry, teacher as transformer, Ted Hughes, The Thought-Fox. Bookmark the permalink.

What Have I Learned

Posted on August 14, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I engaged in several virtual and face-to-face conversations over the past week about what learning and education should look like today. Gary Snyder summarized some of this in this thoughtful poem. I believe we need to focus more on the tools children need than the content. That is not to say content is not important. It must stretch, challenge, and allow growth.

Curriculum has narrowed, become content, and the use of tools. It does not always focus on the proper use of tools and development of habits, skills, attitudes, practices, dispositions, etc. What role does discernment play in today’s schools? What eloquent questions, with no presumption of answers, are teachers and students alike asked? Content, in the form of knowledge and information, becomes the currency of the realm and wise application is often pushed aside. 21st Century education requires a mindful approach. An approach that recognizes the changing of the flowers in each moment.

What have I learned but

the proper use for several tools?

The moments

between hard pleasant tasks

To sit silent, drink wine,

and think my own kind

of crusty dry thoughts.

–the first Calochortus flowers

and in all the land,

it’s spring.

I point them out:

the yellow petals, the golden hairs,

to Gen.

Seeing in silence:

never the same twice,

but when you get it right,

you pass it on.

19 Comments

Posted in 21st Century Education, Education, Leadership, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged 21st Century Education, creativity, education, eloquent questions, Gary Snyder, leadership, Mindful Practice, poetry, stewardship, teacher as transformer, What Have I Learned. Bookmark the permalink.

Sometimes

Posted on August 13, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I registered to attend David Whyte’s retreat called Poetry in the Woods in November. His poetry speaks to my heart and the retreat is about being in touch with the heart.

I spent considerable time today talking about what I love: teaching and learning. I know I will miss each of them and want them in my life in some form. What I do not want is to be involved in teaching and learning focused on rules and not children. It is important for me as I enter this phase not to assume answers, but to be open to questions, particularly prickly ones. They are the ones I sometimes turn away from. I need to turn to them, receive them, and hold them gently.

I need to let questions find a space to emerge. which suggests less trampling through the forest and more quiet approaches. It is where the wisdom appears from, those questions which need my silence to be heard.

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come

to a place

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

you are doing right now.

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away.

28 Comments

Posted in Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged creativity, David Whyte, education, eloquent questions, Mindful Practice, Sometimes, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

Mindful

Posted on July 10, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I struggled for a few days with the overwhelming job, or so it seemed, of beginning to craft a purpose statement for the dissertation topic. Thankfully, my advisor told me to read and read and read the classics in education and the not so classic. I immersed myself in John Dewey, who I have read before, Alfred North Whitehead, who I had not read, and Ivan Illich, who worked with Paulo Freire . I am going to re-read Freire.

Last night, I fell asleep thinking about these people and woke up still thinking about them. As I got mobile, it dawned on me what happened and I recalled Mary Oliver’s beautiful poem. I don’t hold answers. I hold questions. Their eloquence lead me into life daily and the answers are often in the things I take for granted. I posted a re-worked purpose statement, based on just letting things percolate and doing some free writing, and one of my colleagues commented back that it was making more sense. Be mindful scholar.

Every day

I see or I hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It is what I was born for–

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world–

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful–

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these–

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean’s shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

14 Comments

Posted in Community, Education, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments and tagged Alfred North Whitehead, education, eloquent questions, Ivan Illich, John Dewey, Mary Oliver, Mindful, Mindful Practice, paulo freire, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

How to Regain Your Soul

Posted on July 6, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I opened a poetry anthology to the index and this title jumped off the page. It has been an eventful week. I settled into Spokane including a place to lay my head this fall. When I come here, I find I feel I am in community. It was word-of-mouth that led me to the apartment I will have. One person told me to check with another who referred me to another and eventually the circle was complete.

When I am here, I drop some screen time with no television. I turn my computer on and listen to CKUA the greatest little radio station in the world.

I need to settle into a regime now to tackle the reading, writing, and research that is around the corner. Gonzaga has excellent to a beautiful river walk to the Spokane Falls and Riverfront Park which I visited in its heyday. Spokane hosted the World’s Fair in 1974 and I was in Nelson BC then and came down with friends.

The river walk is a great place to let my brain relax, my mind to expand, and physically be invigorated. Last summer, as I walked, I found my poet’s voice and I am counting on that happening again over the next couple of weeks. I regain my soul in nature as William Stafford so eloquently puts it. When we got to Waterton, it was dragonflies over Red Rock Canyon that were my white butterflies.

Come down Canyon Creek trail on a summer afternoon

that one place where the valley floor opens out. You will see

the white butterflies. Because of the way shadows

come off those vertical rocks in the west, there are

shafts of sunlight hitting the river and

a deep long purple gorge straight ahead. Put down your pack.

Above, air sighs the pines. It was this way

when Rome was clanging, when Troy was being built,

when campfires lighted caves. The white butterflies dance

by the thousands in the still sunshine. Suddenly, anything

could happen to you. Your soul pulls toward the canyon

and then shines back through the white wings to be you again.

20 Comments

Posted in Community, Education, Mindful Life, Nature in All Its Glory, Poetry and tagged community, creativity, Gonzaga, How to Regain Your Soul, Mindful Practice, nature, poetry, Spokane, teacher as transformer, William Stafford. Bookmark the permalink.

Harvest Home

Posted on June 24, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

Tomorrow is my last day. I looked for the poem I thought would speak most eloquently to the role teachers can play. Bettye T. Spinner wrote this lovely poem. What if our classrooms were poetry meant to be lived and learned? It would speak to the wonder and awe of each day we spend with children.

In the ideal

it is harvesting

the work we do–

a reaping of crops grown

from ancestral seeds,

a gathering of first fruit,

from vines that traces their sources

beyond geography,

beyond gender,

beyond the bleach

and blush

and black of skin