Happy 4th! Now Where Have You (...okay, I) Been?

5 weeks is a long time and it has been that long since I last checked in from the front lines of Pok-O. Those 5 weeks have been chock full. Nine schools came to Pok-O for day and multi-day trips in the short 15 days of June that we are open for groups. These are the clients who have been coming to Pok-O for years and always keep theses prime, early summer dates. In June you can hear the plants growing here. The nights are cool and the days are breezy and warm. It is the best time of the year and, fortunately, I am able to spend most of it outside teaching, in my natural environment, pun intended. But seriously, the days of June are not only full. Each day we are hosting nearly our maximum number of students, thankfully pulling me from behind the desk and out in front of a group of students. No year at PMOEC would be complete without the second trip of the year by Rosemary Reader and her wonderful students, a spring tradition. Since I started at Pok-O, I have seen her twice a year with the same genuine desire to make her students' experience, as well as her craft as a teacher, as deep and meaningful as it can be. She draws out the best in the PMOEC staff and we thank her for that. So do her students. As June marched forward there were many other teachers and groups who came for their annual visit but none of them has made more visits than our last client of the year, Mayfield Elementary. Historically, written documentation is not the strong suit of PMOEC but one thing is never in debate, no matter whose oral history you are hearing; Mayfield has been coming every year that PMOEC has been in existence. That's over 35 trips from the same school. This year Mayfield came with nearly 60 students and over 20 chaperones. It is atypical for a group to bring nearly more than one chaperone per every 3 students, but this school boasts a generation of parents who came to Pok-O! Few other clients can come close to matching Mayfield's civic pride and sense of duty, much less their longevity at POk-O. On this, our nation's birthday, it is nice to reflect on an All-Americal town like Mayfield. But now to the unsettling time at Pok-O for an outdoor educator. For, while students are currntly at every turn throughout the acreage of Pok-O, they are all here with the summer camp and are not under my watch. It is an eery comfort to see games, hear laughter and feel the good vibes throughout the grounds and have nothing to do with it. Still, in my little niche carved out of the summer camp phenomenon, I sit with the mission of PMOEC moving me forward. Their will be hiring, their will be programming changes, their will be grant writing, and their will be a wedding! The next 5 weeks will be as full as the last and, most importantly, the focus turns to the next school year and forming the next community of dynamic, lighthearted, hard-working, dedicated, inventive and curious instructors and staff to carry the message of outdoor education further. Have a safe and happy holiday. Until the next time...