Until the ideas stop!

Perhaps you, like I, are contacted periodically by the agent of your college class whose mission is to collect news of us to publish in the college alumni magazine. And, perhaps like I, when yours arrives in the mail, you turn first to the last section of the magazine - the one that contains Class News. Well, to be honest, I go first to the page of obituaries to see if there are people from around or in my class at Colby College who have died. Each issue reminds me, a member of the Class of 1965, that more are, in fact, dying. Yet, as I read the Class News, I see that many of us tell our Agent, "Hell, no, we're not done yet. I see a hopeful rise in post retirement careers being reported.

Why have a dragged your attention through this prelude?

The current issue of the Colby Alumni Magazine contains a message our Class Agent delivered for me. First, I told of having the sheer pleasure of presenting a session at OBTC 2007 with my son Dave. Then, responding to the cue he seems to give all of us in his solicitation about how we are handling retirement, I respond to this effect. "No, I love teaching. I don't see retirement as an attractive alternative." Then I said. "I'll keep going until the ideas stop".

What a ghastly prospect!

Imagine you, I, any of us who have the juice to want to be part of OBTS, going on acting like teachers AFTER the ideas stop! We could keep invoking the ideas of others. We're quite good at that, are we not? But, what if we are driving to school one morning, as I just did, and roll our minds to the point of a class to begin at 9:30 AM, as my OB class will, and......Nothing. Nada. White noise.

Here is what I think today it means to be an entrepreneurial teacher. We have fresh, original ideas about how to enliven the learning experience that crowd out every other. They come to us on demand, and even undemanded. Like the genius of the business entrepreneurs who blow minds every day with new products, services, and ways of operating the business, we have and TRY OUT some of these ideas in the classroom. Some blow learners minds. Some blow up in our faces. We and they always learn something as a consequence of the experiment.

Today, we are examining what it means to be chosen according to how others read our personalities. I have the class all pegged out - opening remarks, a sure fire exercise I have used and refined, an episode of the semester long story we are listening to using a CD version of Max Berry's satirical novel Company..
Yet, on the way in, I had an idea. What if, to start this class, I point out two of the 28 students and tell them to stay, while I send 26 out of the room? They can look in through the glass door. What might they be saying to each other? Five minutes. All are back in their seats and we run the planned exercise. Will I use it? Most likely.

What is OB teacher and OB learner Hell?

Going on after the ideas stop.