Health & Fitness
Learning to Overcome Obstacles at an Early Age
A resiliency to change may be built in to the young. A beat-up track and a mile race illustrates how easily the young accept change and overcome obstacles.
I get a kick out of those Internet advertisers that have one kid complaining about "today's generation," that they "have it so good," that it took a minute "in my day" to download a photo.
Each generation has complained about the one before it. It has been my observation that a "generation" is as short as four years - think senior year to freshman year. The tweeners who loved "Twilight" did not find sympathy among senior girls.
Those commercials effectively illustrate the speed of change.
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Being able to cope with everything changing all the time may be built into our youngest generation; which is why they seem to overcome obstacles with a breeze. They expect change.
I saw this illustrated at the recently held Peachtree Elementary Mile Run. The school is in Peachtree Corners and is one of nine public schools in the Norcross Cluster Schools Partnership. For almost two years, the school's PTA has been raising money to repair the track at the school.
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The track is spattered with orange danger cones and half-foot-high peaks of asphalt pushed up by roots of trees.
In spite of those obstacles, the students just ran around them or hopped over them. It's as if they were saying, "nothing is going to stop me."
The winners of that race almost tied. They are the Whitmer twins, often referred to as "Team Whitmer." Savannah and Georgia, daughters of Marilyn and Richard Whitmer of Peachtree Corners, like their classmates, had a great time at the race. They were side by side the entire race, almost running into each other as they ran due to the obstacles which often narrowed the running space. Savannah beat Georgia by half a second to win the race.
Fortunately for everyone at Peachtree Elementary, the track is about to be fully redone. The PTA has raised money through many, many fund raising events. And they just received a $5,000 grant from Lowe's Toolbox for Education fund. More funding is needed to complete the project so that there is a fence around the track and trees are cleared that could eventually mar the concrete.
So now the field is changing and no one will miss the orange cones. They will simply accept the change.
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Blog posting from Elaine Fuerst, volunteer with Norcross Cluster Schools Partnership