About a month ago our Middle School PE teacher, Brian Rannie, asked me to go on a trail run with him. I had been upping my mileage a little and figured that I could complete the 13-mile run, although I was worried about slowing him down a bit. However, our colleague, Andy Lammers committed, and it is hard for me to resist opportunities to run with friends. I dragged along my neighbor who had just completed a half marathon the weekend before, and we set off some thirty miles north of Asheville to the Appalachian Trail, which serves as the border between North Carolina and Tennessee for a stretch.
It was the proverbial clear, cold morning -- well below freezing as we started climbing up into the mountains. The leaves were already down, and the trail was covered with a fluffy mess that made footing tenuous. Our goal was an out and back to Big Bald, a climb of around 2000 feet over six and a half miles. We all worked hard on the way up and about a mile from the summit, I stopped everyone and said I thought I’d stop there and wait for them to come back down. I knew I could easily make it to the top, but I was concerned about the return trip as I hadn’t run 13 miles in many years. My friends offered me words of encouragement without degrading my manhood, so I followed them up. The view was certainly worth it, and we took fifteen minutes or so to celebrate being on top of the world.
The descent was much worse for me than the climb as it was fast and the footing was slippery and obscured. The last two miles I had to walk the steepest downhills as my legs were shaky enough to make a fall almost certain. Truthfully, during the last half mile all I wanted to do was lie down on those fluffy leaves beside the trail. When I got to the end, I felt bad enough to pass the car keys over to Andy as driving seemed like a real push. An hour later, I soaked in the bathtub, feeling something between pride and relief that I had finished.
As I look back on that day, I think about how difficult it was, but I also think about how wonderful it was and is to do things that are a real challenge. It is pretty easy to slide through a life filled with the routine of our days -- the same repetitive tasks that do little to stretch us and force us to grow. I am reminded that I need to continue to seek challenges so that I will be equipped to handle what fate and others put in my path.
I am also reminded that school should not just be about kids passing through a schedule of routine classes each day. We must create challenges for them -- real challenges that force them to access strengths that are hidden behind fear or are simply untapped. Young people have amazing resiliency, and we need not be afraid to ask them to walk out on a limb, even if the path forward may require a jump of some sort. We want our students to have the confidence to attempt great things; however, the path to greatness is not for the meek.
The second part of this story is that I had others with me to encourage me along the way. Sure, I was the one took every last one of those thousands of steps down that mountain, but I’m pretty sure I never would have gotten to the top without my friends there to support me. This is the other thing that we must do for our students: provide them a supportive environment, full of friends and teachers who encourage when attempts into the unknown are made. The knowledge that others believe in our strengths, even when we don’t, is sometimes all we need to get to the top.
Funny, I've been thinking a lot about my own comfort zones and the value and, well, discomfort, of going outside them, which has made me more aware of my students' comfort zones and those times they step outside of them. Hmmm.
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