Energy!

[Hougton-Mifflin eReference]

Energy - Capacity or power for work or vigorous activity: animation, force, might, potency, power, puissance, sprightliness, steam, strength. Informal: get-up-and-go, go, pep, peppiness, zip.

Here it is Friday, May 23rd, the start of Memorial Day weekend, and I am at my desk at school putting finishing touches on the printed OBTC 2008 Program.The campus is pretty much deserted, in that it is the week between graduation and when Summer Sessions begin. I could be home with my feet up. No, this is not a plea for sympathy, it is an exclamation of joy.

I am not tired. I am notfrazzled. I am not worried (well, a little worried). I am not expecting to "crash" after June 14, the end of OBTC 2008. Instead, I am full of energy, crackling with energy, loaded with the stuff.

Why?

It's not my youth. I just celebrated my 65th birthday last Saturday.

It is the fact that I am a teacher.

Being a teacher who loves learning and learning with and from teachers, students, writers, practitioners, the Web, almost any object or person linkable to my questions of how to design ever-better lessons, I am stoked! Just a few short days from now, I will be connected to over 300 innovative OB teachers in a peerless conference at Babson, a college created and sustained by entrepreneurial energies.

Amazing, isn't it? When one is, and her or his core, a teacher, there is a bottomless supply of inside-out energy that, like our OBTC 2008 logo, blows my mind.

I can't wait to start OBTC. This feeling summons how I felt as a kid knowing that in less than three weeks, I'd be going to the Maine State YMCA Camp for two amazing weeks. That is the place and time, when people told me they notice my teaching-leading proclivities, my boundless energy to try new things. Yes, amazing that 55 years later, I feel exactly the same.