In a lot of ways, I hate the Winter Olympics.
The weirdly tight snow suits, ski jumpers flying through the sky at an ungodly, parallel-to-the-ground rate, and moguls begging to tear the ACLs of anyone who approaches.
In so many other ways, I can’t help but to love the Winter Olympics.
That same strange-ness begs me to watch with glued eyes as I have that sick feeling where you can’t help but watch if a snowboarder has a fall or a figure skater completely eats it on a jump. There is something wistfully enjoyable about watching these Olympians mess up while you simultaneously deal with a pit in your stomach. The Olympics are sort of twisted, when you think about it. These people are the world’s best athletes. Yet, they mess up all the time, and to make it even better, it is televised for seven billion people to see.
The Olympics never fail to surprise me.
For instance, Is a Biathlon event really a thing? Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this.
Apparently, it has been around for quite some time. One hundred and fifty-seven years, to be exact. It combines the seemingly contradictory elements of skiing and shooting. The exhausting, cross-country skiing mixed with the immediate accuracy and control through shooting proves to conclude that this sport is one of the most challenging that exists. Switching from intense, high power endurance to exact control requires an obscure sense of marksmanship.
I learned about this sport when two of my students turned around and one asked me, “Ms. L, have you ever heard of a biathlon?” In my head, I was thinking, a bath lawn? Lawn that you put in your bath? What is this kid talking about? Then he spelled it out for me. B-i-a-t-h-l-o-n. Ohhhh. I see. “No, I’ve never heard of it. Is it a sport?” I proceeded to Google search this event. Mind you – this was a Friday, my students were working in the computer lab to finish the Write Score test (no comment), and there was some down time. I swear, it isn’t every day that I Google this kind of thing for one of my students.
We proceeded to watch a YouTube video, because, that’s what you do when you’re a teacher and you don’t have the answer to a question.
We watch as these athletes intensely sprint through a track on skis and stop, lay down, pull the gun off their back, and shoot at a target. Our eyes were fixated. It all started making sense. As I watched, I realized something: Biathlons are a lot like teaching.
As teachers, we are always sprinting. Around curves, uphill – sprinting to the finish line that is our “lesson.” We plan in advance, train for these big desires to make our students better people, teach them a lesson, and sometimes miss the target when we stop to shoot and follow through. It requires so much trial and error. We have to figure out which skis fit us best and will be effective enough to efficiently teach. We have to prepare our content and know it like we know the gun on our backs. Sometimes, after sprinting so hard, it becomes worth it when you realize that it’s possible to hit all of your targets.
In essence, we as teachers are Biathlon competitors. Striving to win the gold, every day.
Teaching as Storytelling 