Tag: Olympics

#WhatItTakes Olympic Manifesto – The Last Verse

So, the Olympic Games have come to a close. The athletes will be flying back, and their stories of struggle and failure or triumph will make the waves for weeks, if not years to come. The last verse of the #WhatItTakes Olympic Manifesto dropped today. Shane Koyczan is back, and it is fitting. Here it is, then.

There is a war you wage on yourself  every time you attempt to do better

The letter of resignation you wrote is a no thank you note you keep using for target practice

THIS is what it takes.

These are the brakes you cut to keep yourself from slowing down, 

To keep yourself from stopping,

Topping your last achievement will never ever take less effort than your maximum.

What takes you from start to finish is more than the muscle around your bones.

May exhaustion turn your arms into the stones you must lift if ever you claim victory

May gravity always be the foe that prevents you from taking flight

May there forever be more fight in the other guy

May you be blessed with the nightmare of constantly asking yourself why you should keep going?

Knowing the boundaries of your reach will teach you to extend past them.

Do not CONDEMN failure

You will come to know it

You will be crestfallen

You will be beat down

You will at times drown in the drought of your determination

You will stumble

You will make mistakes

You will learn there was a level beyond the hard way.

THIS is your education

THIS is what it takes!

-Shane Koyczan

Tomorrow will feature the entire Manifesto. Stay tuned!

©booksnnooks.org All Rights Reserved

Verse 2 of #WhatItTakes Olympic Manifesto by Shane Koyczan and Sport Chek

Verse 2 of the Olympic Manifesto by Shane Koyczan dropped on Sunday, August 14th. Here is the video, and below it, the transcription.

You have to ask yourself, is your prime ahead of you? Or behind you?

Will your worst days remind you that your best are still to come?

Is the drum in your chest loud enough to keep your challengers up at night?

Do you have what it takes when the fight goes into extra rounds?

Will the surplus of pounds you lifted be enough to prepare you for the more that is required when what comes next finally arrives?

 Are you committed to the grace it takes to turn your falls into dives to cut through the surface of the water?

Will you have what it takes when there’s no spotter to save you, and no net to catch you?

When your mind asks for more, will your body match you?

– Shane Koyczan

I realize too that I missed the Opening of this Manifesto (this would go before my post on August 13th, 2016), so here is the video for that, and the transcription below it.

We hope every seat is full

We hope you hear them cheer for everyone but you

We hope defeat is in your cards

We hope your hope splinters into shards

that you must handpick from the bleeding wound of your defeat

We hope that every athlete you meet

is better, more determined than you

But you need to be tested the same way wrong needs right

The same way ROAR needs FIGHT

You must fight to be here

You must pay with sacrifice

You must disregard the price of admission

If you want in, it’ll cost you. It’ill cost you broken bones and blood

We hope for a flashflood of fear and uncertainty

We wish this misery upon you

because it gives birth to brilliance

There will be a moment in which everything you want becomes a singular goal

A moment of debt when every heartbeat you own can’t pay for every breath you stole

You must pay with the whole of you

Because this is the price and these are the stakes

you must pay for all the hurts and all the aches

you must open your heart like a vault and pay for your pain

because THIS is what it takes.

-Shane Koyczan

With Verse 3 dropping on Thursday, the 18th, and Verse 4 (or the closing) on Sunday, the 21st, I shall be here, to post videos and the transcriptions. Monday, the 22nd, will feature the entire poem. All the best, Team Canada. We stand behind you.

©booksnnooks.org All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

The Olympic Games: Galvanizing toward Unity

So, I have been thinking about this since the Olympics began last week. I always seem to be particularly moved by the stories and the struggles of the athletes when they start, and specifically patriotic towards my Canada. I realized the Olympics are a great way to unite the people of a country, and even strangers from other lands through the shared experience of watching an athlete through his/her journey. From watching that person struggle and then achieve their greatest dream, or not. There is a common journey that the viewer and the athlete go through at specific moments of these games, and this is what seeks to unite us as fans of the Olympics.

Having found an art activity online, my teaching staff and I decided we would recreate that unity with art for our students.We used the Olympic symbol of the 5 coloured and interlocked rings to teach our students the value of the unifying power of the games.

We painted students’ hands with one of each of the 5 colours of the rings (black, red, yellow, blue and green), and had them put their hand prints onto blank sheets of paper, as below:

Then, we collected our students hand prints in different colours and cut them out separately. This was done for ease of making out final product. We figured that we could have more control over the potential messes that would be caused, if each child did his/her hand print separately.

Then, the teaching staff got on our hands and knees and painted a large sheet of white paper, as below. Now, this can also be done on a white sheet, or a large white canvas.

wp-1470952456317.jpeg

We decided, we, the teaching staff, would also include our hand prints, and since we were an odd number, one of our teachers made a hand print of 5 different colours that was included ahead of “Rio”, below.

wp-1470952500534.jpeg

The final product came together when we glued all the coloured hand prints onto the respective coloured rings.

image

This activity focused on not just the theme of the Olympic Games but a way to show our students the unity inherent in sharing common experiences. A shared experience like living in the same country, speaking the same language and living similar lifestyles despite, (as is the case in Canada) being a very multicultural fabric of people. Over the past week, our students have learned about the different countries participating in the games, and how to identify their respective flags. A tall feat for a lot of our 3 – 5 age range.

And that is the power of these games. Not just to go forth and be the best you can after you have trained and trained for years, but also to galvanize peoples toward a common experience where they can relate to each other, even if it is for a few weeks every 4th summer.

 

©booksnnooks.org All Rights Reserved