We just wrapped up an eventful two and a half weeks of biking in PE. At Sabot we talk about risk as being one of the habits of mind. Bike weeks always afford plenty of opportunities for risk. We had five first grade students willing to take off their training wheels for the first time. Six years ago there were some other first graders willing to take this risk. Those are now the 8th grade students at Sabot who took a field trip and rode 11.5 miles on the Virginia Capital Trail. They were confident, happy, and definitely could have gone a lot further had time allowed. Our preschool and kindergarten students looked on while watching the duathlons (run-bike-run), absorbing the older students’ enthusiasm and sensing their feelings of accomplishment.

I spoke with each class after their duathlon. I thanked them for being willing to take a risk. It takes a lot of courage to start something when you know up front that it will be challenging and you don’t know exactly what the outcome will be. Students demonstrated that by taking the risk, they found themselves to be a lot stronger than they initially though. My hope for each of our students who participated in bike weeks is that they learned something about their own strengths that will translate beyond their physical endeavors and into their academics and friendships.

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