by Mr. Eric Saltsman
When I was younger, I was a very talented runner. Perhaps my greatest claim to fame to date is my 4×100 metre sprinting team finishing 1st place in the TDSB City Final back in… well, I’d rather not date myself on that one.
I continued running and competing in sprinting competitions throughout high school. The exhilaration of the (at the time) 11-12+ seconds it took to run the 100m dash was truly an otherwise unrivalled feeling. There you are, in the blocks at the starting line, your heart is racing, ears locked in for the sound of the gun, eyes dead ahead. When that “BANG” finally sounds, it is completely jarring to the system. You freeze up for half an instant and then, subconsciously allow for the desperate adrenaline coursing through your veins to frantically jolt you in a beeline forward, trying to gain the edge on seven other individuals moving with you stride for stride.
My biggest flaw as a runner was my start. I, like many others, was slow out of the gate. I could make up ground at the end of the runs, but when a race is only so many seconds long, there is only so much that can be done to catch up. And thus, by the end of high school my “racing dreams” were (appropriately) dashed by a dose of reality.
But that did not mean that my running days would be over altogether. Rather, it was just the beginning of the next step (yes, pun very much intended).
I have always appreciated the age-old saying “You learn something new every day” because of how true I find it to be, day after day. The most important take-home in that seemingly generic saying is that there is no predetermined marker for learning. One would be very hard-pressed to try to achieve a PhD in the same time it takes Usain Bolt (or even my 16-year-old self) to run 100 metres, and that is more than okay. Dare I say, it is even reasonable or, better yet, expected. Further, it is why we have to open ourselves up to the idea that learning is all around us, no matter where we are.
Learning is a marathon, not a sprint. You do not use it all up in one fell swoop. And, if you get off to a poor start, there is still lots of time down the road to make up for it. Most importantly, it is unlikely you will get disqualified for running out of your lane… because there are no lanes in the race that is life.
When a student enters high school in Grade 9, they arrive with a base of knowledge from a variety of experiences, both educational and otherwise, up until that moment in time. By the time that same student graduates in Grade 12, there is a strong likelihood that they are a new person altogether. Why? The short answer is the maturity developed by years of interacting with peers and, whether knowingly or not, having spent endless hours learning.
As a society, we agree that it would be foolish to expect a student entering into Grade 9 to possess the same skills and knowledge as that of a Grade 12 student making their way out of their high school walls for the final time. Why? Not necessarily because the Grade 12 student has completed Grade 11 Chemistry and the Grade 9 student does not yet even know what chemistry is. Rather, it is because of their experiences. They have had the opportunity to learn in new ways simply by being alive for a longer stretch of time. They have had the chance to learn from teachers, parents, friends, and administrators, and learn about themselves in new ways every day. Hopefully they have even walked away with some general knowledge from a class or two… but, hey, we all learn in different ways, so I will not be too picky.
Now, does this same Grade 12 student, walking out of the high school for the final time, smile because they have been freed from the burden of learning in the classroom environment? I would highly doubt it. Rather, this is merely the moment before the next step of the journey. And whether that next step involves more school, travel, work, or perhaps all of the above, there is a wide world and a long life ahead wherein the opportunity to learn something new continues every day.
This is why we should be encouraging our students in every possible way that we can. One botched math test should never define an individual; neither should one lousy basketball game, nor receiving discipline for inappropriate behaviour. A poor test can be re-written, a bad game can be forgotten with one great hustle play, and a heartfelt apology can get an individual back into the well-deserved good graces of their superior. Learning is not a one-shot deal. It is not linear. We take our mistakes and seek to improve upon them. That is what makes us human. Further, that is how we become our best selves. We want every individual to be able to turn any moment of despair into a moment of optimism that the future will be brighter because it is a moment we can learn from.
We are not coaching our students/our children/our nieces and nephews/our neighbours/our peers/our colleagues to aim for the first 100 metres and call it a day, to give everything you have in one attempt and leave it at that. Rather, we want them to understand that every attempt should only be the first hundred metres of the marathon to come. That success does not simply come overnight. And that there is no substitute for hard work. All of which are lessons we continue to learn day by day.
Although my sprinting days are behind me, this past October I ran a half marathon. It was the third time I have done so. For now, the full marathon still looks down upon me as a Leviathan. If I were to use my aforementioned analogy of a student entering high school, this would effectively place me as an individual entering into Grade 11; deciding if I want to go for the Tri-Sci or steer towards the social sciences. In either case, the end result is the same. To work hard. To grow. To learn. Perhaps 2018 will be the year I “graduate” and ultimately accomplish this life-long goal. And if I do, as with the learning process, it will really just be the start of a new beginning in my running life and the next 100 metres to work towards.
Eric Saltsman is on the English faculty at Bnei Akiva Schools.
