A Teachable Moment: My First Marathon

Recently I completed my first marathon.  I had completed several half marathons and decided I was ready to take on the challenge of a full 42.2K run.  After completing the race I thought my experience might be worth sharing with my students.  Teachable moments can come in many forms and I saw an opportunity with my experience.  After some personal reflection and planning on what I wanted to share with my students; I decided I wanted to share the overall experience of setting a goal and working towards completing it.  Finishing the race meant many things to me.  There is something unique about setting out to run a marathon and both the physical and mental commitment that goes with such a goal.  In class I shared my story with my students, and we talked about setting goals and working towards something.

In education there is a term called modeling, and as it sounds, it means to model or demonstrate the behaviour, task or activity the teachers wants to see from their students.  By sharing achievements and goals I set with my students I am modeling the behaviour of goal setting.  By discussing the training process with my students I am modeling behaviour that demonstrates what it takes to make goals a reality.  I truly believe all people can achieve great things and setting goals and then taking the steps to achieve those goals can be a rewarding experience.  By sharing my race story with the class, students were able to learn from something I did and possibly connect my experience to their lives and something they want to achieve.

Lesson Notes: Teachable moments can come from anywhere.  In the day to day there are many opportunities to bring learning experiences from outside the classroom to enrich discussions and shape learning beyond course content.

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