You could call her the Energizer Bunny.

For 43 years, Leslie Mirkovich has taught the same curriculum for the same grade at the same school.

She’s the expert on mealworms and states of matter, subtraction by thousands and silent reading.

She’s the Blakely champion of second-graders — and former second-graders’ second-graders. (When you’ve been teaching that long, you start to reach the next gen.)

This year — her final pre-retirement — she’s also the recipient of the Bainbridge Island Kiwanis Club’s Educator of the Year Award. Here’s what she had to say about the honor, her kids and the profession.

On maintaining enthusiasm: “It’s the energy in the room, from all those little kids that keeps me going. They’re endearing and funny and frustrating and harassing, but it’s just a perfect age.”

Why she stayed at Blakely for 43 years: “Because Blakely quickly became ‘home.’ The staff welcomed me in, took me under their wings and treated me like family. They showed me how to teach and became my role models. I had the big brothers and sisters that I did not have as an only child. Each time the curriculum got ‘tired’ the district adopted something new.”

A rewarding moment: “A young single mom who had been raised on the island came back and wanted to enroll her daughter at school at Blakely. So they did that and escorted the mother and daughter to my classroom. They came in and the mom said, ‘It is you!’ I looked at her and realized I had had the mom as a second-grader and now I had her daughter.”

Why second-graders are the best: “They’re still curious and I might be able to tell them some things they haven’t learned and yet they’re old enough to zip their own coats, tie their own shoes and go to the bathroom by themselves.”

Saying goodbye: “It’s working out that I’m doing it in stages. We had a big retirement party about a month ago. We partied then and we partied [on the last day of school] when the kids were all gone. As long as I do it in little steps, I’m OK.”

What’s next: “I’m going to enjoy sunshine on my deck. I have a great deck! I’m also a quilter and the quilt guild I belong to, one of their charity branches is making quilts for at risk babies at Harrison Hospital in Silverdale. I hope we get to travel some. My husband has decided he is not retiring yet, so we’ll travel some when he can get vacation. We’d like to go visit our son in Las Vegas. We’d like to do a lot of short trips around here. I’d like to go back to the area of Montana where I was when I was young. My husband’s heritage is Croatian so we’d like to go see Croatia.”

How she’ll spend her $500 cash prize: “If it’s that much, I’d certainly like to put a fair share into that travel kitty! Or, if I get self-absorbed, that would buy a lot of fabric.”