Teacher as Transformer

Pure Relationships

Posted on August 17, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

Today, as I read, I came across this passage from the work of D. H. Lawrence. It is not a poem, but the words have a poetic quality to them and allow me to consider what life is all about. Life is relational and that is not limited to people. I live in relationship to everything I come in contact with. In the busyness of life, this is a gentle reminder to acknowledge the relationships consciously. I witness pure relationships in these acknowledgement, these accomplishments.

The passage has a Zen quality, but it reminded me that until about 300 years ago our souls were inseparable from our physical being even in western culture.

“If we think about it, we find that our life consists in this achieving of a pure relationship between ourselves and the living universe about us. This is how I ‘save my soul’ by accomplishing a pure relationship between me and another person, me and other people, me and a nation, me and a race of men, me and animals, me and the trees or flowers, me and the earth, me and the skies and the sun and stars, me and the moon: an infinity of pure relationships, big and little, like the stars of the sky: that makes our eternity, for each one of us, me and the timber I am sawing, the lines of force I follow; me and the dough I knead for bread, me and the very motion with which I write, me and the bit of gold I have got. This, if we knew it, is our life and our eternity: the subtle, perfected relation between me and my whole circumambient universe.”

16 Comments

Posted in Community, Leadership, Mindful Life, Reflective Moments and tagged community, creativity, D.H. Lawrence, leadership, Mindful Practice, poetic quality, Pure Relationships, spirituality, teacher as transformer, western culture, zen. Bookmark the permalink.

It’s a Matter of Perspective

Posted on August 16, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

When I talk to students, this is something I try remind them of when they are struggling with how long things take. It is so much better to look ahead and be in the present moment.

4 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Love never dies

Posted on August 15, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

This is a beautiful poem and picture to help focus the day.

advocatemmmohan aksharaalu

what is there

in the Horizons

While reaching

Sun showers golden dust

Sky displays it’s rainbow butterflys

Soil mounts up heads to view graceful vista

This eternal love every day takes brith significantly – Love never dies

View original post

6 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. 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.

7 Logics for Peaceful Living! – Pause

Posted on August 14, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

These are seven great points to having a peaceful life.

Ralphie´s Portal

Wisdom from India by Spiritual Networks:

View original post

16 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

dog’s life

Posted on August 13, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

Sometimes it feels this way. Sometimes it does not. It is a nice little poem to begin the day with.

Poems, stories, paintings and more by Sharmishtha Basu

Sharmishtha basu

View original post

5 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. 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.

Steady my harried pace

Posted on August 12, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

What a great poem David posted. Take a moment and read it slowly.

Live & Learn

Wilferd Arlan Peterson (1900–95) was born in Whitehall, Michigan and lived most of his life in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was an American author who wrote for This Week magazine (a national Sunday supplement in newspapers distributed to 13,000,000 readers). For twenty-five years, he wrote a monthly column for Science of Mind magazine. He published nine books starting in 1949 with The Art of Getting Along: Inspiration for Triumphant Daily Living.” Peterson was regarded as “one of the best loved American writers of the 20th century, renowned for his inspirational wisdom and aphoristic wit” by the Independent Publishers Group. His influences include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Abraham Lincoln, among many others. His contemporaries include Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie, and current writers and philosophers such as Jack Canfield and Brian Tracy have referred to Peterson’s works. He was married to Ruth Irene Rector Peterson (1921-79)…

View original post 44 more words

9 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

I Believe in All That Has Never Yet Been Spoken

Posted on August 10, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

I am getting back into a groove after my first full week home. I let things flow a bit this week. Rilke suggested letting go or not contriving in this poem. When I don’t over plan, I find I am more open and accept the flow of things much like the beginner’s mind of a child. Watching children engrossed in play is a reminder that can happen for me as an adult and, as it does, the river widens and flows in every widening channels. Life becomes somehow larger, but not in an explainable way.

Posting images of our trip through Glacier National Park is believing in all that has never yet been spoken. Nature allows me to speak without using words. It is a palette of creation which speaks without speaking and shares without words. It just is and teaches through its presence.

The role of sabbath is to rest on the swelling and ebbing currents and rest in each moment. Perhaps, as I do, I take an expanded mind and soul into next week.

I believe in all that has never been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

Then in those swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.

28 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Mindful Life, Poetry, Reflective Moments, Sabbath and tagged blogging, creativity, Glacier National Park, learning, Mindful Practice, nature, poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke, sabbath, teacher as transformer. Bookmark the permalink.

God of Science

Posted on August 10, 2013 by ivonprefontaine

There is a need to be mindful and fully present in my use of technology. It is a tool and I need to consider the good and harm that can result from the use of this particular tool in this context. This poem is an excellent reminder of this for me.

Source of Inspiration

What has science brought us:
better ways to live or quicker
ways to kill? Have we traded
technology for faith and
compassion? Is God found in a
test-tube or bomb?

Be careful what you worship.
There is but one Source, that
which is omnipotent, shows us
that good used for evil
purposes becomes the
sword of destruction.

Say “no” to thinly disguised
technology that harms under
the guise of helping. Let
the lesson of the bees remind
us if our sick and dying
loved ones are not enough.

View original post