Terry Fox




Southlands Elementary had the Terry Fox run today. They invited CM's children to attend an assembly and watch a video about his accomplishments.
I have two children in elementary school and I've seen the video they usually show. I was curious about how 3-4 year olds would handle these big issues. What questions would they have? Would we have space and time to answer the inquiries during the assembly? Probably not.

When I gathered the children after lunch time I wanted to see how much they knew about him.

"Who is Terry Fox?"

"He is brown and has a bushy tail" -Sophia
"My sister runs for Terry Fox" -Simone
"My brother runs too!" -Gwendolyn
"I don't know" -most of the children

I found this small video that highlighted his achievements and showed it to the children:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0I7vyi8ObI


At the end I asked:
"Who is Terry Fox?"

"He ran across Canada"
"He had an illness called cancer"
"Because of his illness he had a special (prosthetic) leg made for him"
"He ran in the rain and sun and even when it was dark"
"He ran for cancer"

These observations brought on a lively discussion. Why did he get cancer? Why is he missing his leg? Why did he run so far? Where did he sleep?

Sophia asked if we would be running with Terry on the school grounds.

"Sadly no, Terry Fox isn't living anymore but we are running in his memory and to bring awareness to cancer just like he did when he did his challenging run."

Discussing Terry Fox brought up sadness in many of the children. To see someone striving to do such great things and then to find out he is no longer living was such a disappointment.

I got lots of hugs as we sat with that emotion.

Then I said, "One thing Terry Fox said before he died was, 'It's got to keep going without me',"
"So that's why we run to continue what he did."

Some of the children got their rain gear on to head outside to do the Terry Fox run. The timing wasn't great for CM's rest/nap time, so only a select number of children participated.

It was a wet run, but it was comparable to the weather Terry Fox faced as he ran across Canada all those years ago.

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