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Three Olympic hopefuls bring lessons of perserverence, patience and resilience into their classrooms.
Photos: Raina + Wilson
In January 2020, just two months before the world was changed by COVID-19, Lyndsay Tessier was walking toward her classroom at Bridlewood Junior Public School in Scarborough, Ont., when one of the students stopped Tessier in the hallway to greet her with a big smile.
The Grade 3 teacher had recently become somewhat of a celebrity - not to mention an inspiration - after placing ninth in the women's marathon at the World Championship in Doha, Qatar, in September 2019.
When she started teaching at the school 16 years ago, never in her wildest dreams did Tessier think she might one day represent Canada in an Olympic marathon. "I crossed the finish line and my teammate confirmed it was an Olympic qualifying time. My automatic reaction was 'No - it can't be.'"
Tessier, 43, took up competitive running only nine years ago and was participating on her first national team. "I felt so wildly out of place - just with my age and inexperience," she says.
In Doha, Tessier was faced with oppressive 45-degree Celsius heat, which terrified her and meant the marathon started at an unusual hour - midnight. Yet she remained composed and fought back from the 52nd spot after the first lap.
The entire race she had one goal: to make her students back home proud. "There's no way I wanted to say that I had dropped out."
Before she left for the championship, Tessier worried about taking three weeks off from teaching to represent Canada - especially at the beginning of a school year. She shared her concerns with her principal. "I asked, 'What if I flop?'" The principal responded, "That would be a lesson to the children. You are going for something that makes you a little bit uncomfortable and you're risking things like leaving school."
One year later, learning to live with being "uncomfortable" is exactly how Tessier describes teaching through the pandemic. "I was forced to learn all these new things and get comfortable being uncomfortable," she says. "I was completely intimidated by technology. I thought that I might fail [my students]."
Tessier decided to put her Olympic dream on the backburner - or at least keep it on a slow simmer - to focus on teaching. She would wake up at 4 a.m. to get in a 90-minute training run before sitting down at her computer at 6:30 a.m. to fine-tune the day's virtual lessons.
"I feel like we are all much more capable and confident [now] in taking on challenges because we've overcome a big one."
It was a great way for Tessier to see she could be a lifelong learner. She also uses her personal journey, how she lost and rediscovered her passion for running, and dealt with numerous setbacks, to teach other life lessons to the children, and even their parents.
Tessier recalls how in Grade 2 when she didn't initially make her school's cross-country running team, she kept going to practice and eventually did. She went on to become one of the best runners in the school.
Tessier quit running after Grade 8 because she felt too much pressure to win, which caused her to lose her passion for the sport. Nine years ago she started running again and quickly rediscovered her passion. But at the time, she didn't have a coach and put too much stress on her body. She ended up with injuries and with people telling her she should quit. But she persevered.
These are all teachable moments for her students. "I often refer to really bad workouts I've had when they are struggling with math, and I can see their frustration," Tessier says.
There's three keywords she tells her students when they are working toward a goal: patience, persistence and consistency.
Patience because things take time. Persistence means not giving up when things get tough. And consistency because to get better and grow, you have to do things again and again.
In June, Tessie will find out if her Olympic dream comes true. Five women are in the running for only three spots. Whatever the result, she has no doubt the Olympic journey has been worth it.
"I think about the impact my journey could have on my students. If they can draw any sort of inspiration from something I've done, that is the ultimate for me."
Crispin Duenas came up with a saying at the start of the pandemic: "Just because everything is shut down, doesn't mean I have to shut down."
While the past year threw his life as a teacher and Olympic hopeful into complete disarray, Duenas found ways to stay positive. Unable to find weights to train at home in early March, the three-time Olympic archer had to get creative. He loaded up his backpack with physics textbooks to do the heavy lifting.
"With COVID-19, I've learned how adaptable I can become in certain situations that are beyond my control."
When the International Olympic Committee postponed the Tokyo Games for a year, he took it in stride the same way he made the best of it when the school board announced remote teaching because of the virus.
In fact, despite all the uncertainty in the world around him, Duenas was grateful. "I felt fortunate to have the opportunity to maintain a full-time job during the pandemic," he says.
Duenas, who had been a supply teacher at Don Mills Collegiate Institute in Toronto, was offered a full-time, long-term occasional position when a math teacher at the school was unable to return to work.
Duenas taught during the day and trained at night and on weekends - a balance that was more important than ever this past year. "The training is my escape," he says. "You need to do something outside of your day job that makes you happy. For me, it's archery. You need to find whatever it is that makes you happy and gives you that release of stress and go do it."
The same advice applies to the students. "I try to keep their mental health in check," Duenas explains. "I was constantly trying to gauge how my students were doing online, which is hard because some don't like turning on their cameras."
He says the stress for students was palpable as they tried to learn new concepts in a virtual environment, staring at their screens for hours every day. So, Duenas had them sign off their computers for a half an hour, stand up, get fresh air if possible and recharge.
While some teachers found it difficult to embrace remote learning, Duenas says teaching online provided opportunities he wouldn't have had otherwise. He recalls one day while training with the archery team in Cambridge, Ont., he was able to teach his math class from his hotel room using Google Meet. "I haven't taught from the archery range yet," he laughs.
Duenas, 35, says being an Olympian has made him a better teacher and has also helped him dispel some myths about athletes. "It shows the students that you can be an athlete and a scientist at the same time."
In his sport, Duenas explains that athletes are looking for a perfect 10 with each shot but often fail and miss the mark. He uses this example as a teachable moment, describing how they shoot at a target the size of an apple a football field away. Often students in physics and math, the subjects he most often teaches, wonder how what they are learning applies in real life. Duenas explains how in his sport, he has to look at altitude, barometric pressure, relative humidity and other factors that can affect his shot.
"It's interesting to see how wide-eyed they get with the explanation of a sport using science."
To try to be as accurate as possible, Duenas trains by shooting 1,500 arrows a week. He also put in the hard work at the gym to build his core muscles. Duenas started a rigorous fitness regime after a disappointing result at the 2012 London Olympics. That was a defining moment as the next year, he won Canada's first world championship medal by a male in archery in more than 40 years.
When he was in the gym, Duenas tried to focus his eyes on an object on the wall a good distance away. Eventually the object seemed to become bigger, which is the way he trains his mind to focus and to shut out distractions.
Travel restrictions and cancelled events around the world have left athletes like Duenas in limbo, struggling to confirm their spots on the Canadian team.
"My goal is to win an Olympic medal for sure," he says about the Tokyo Olympics.
In Rio in 2016, Duenas had his best Olympic performance to date, beating the 2004 Olympic champion in his first match and narrowly losing his second. As his Olympic career winds down, Duenas is hoping to become a full-time physics teacher soon. He adds, "I want to make physics fun and relatable to help students understand the concepts."
He knows bringing back an Olympic medal from Tokyo could help with that.
A French teacher with the Niagara Catholic District School Board, who normally teaches Grades 1 to 8, holds court far from her class leading a very different lesson for her students.
Jessie MacDonald is trying to pin her opponent down on the mat in a packed hall at the Niagara Falls Convention Centre at a tournament in December 2019.
There are chants of "Let's go, Jessie. You've got this!" from some of the 50 people wearing white T-shirts with the name Team Mac, cheering on Jessie MacDonald's every move in her search to qualify for the Olympics at the Canadian Wrestling Trials.
The crowd roars as the 36-year-old Ontario Certified Teacher locks her younger opponents' legs together and rolls her over again and again to score big points.
Moments later, and up by 10 points, MacDonald is declared the winner. She leaps into the arms of her husband, Evan MacDonald, who competed in wrestling for Canada at the 2004 Olympics. The couple is savouring a moment they have been visualizing for years. "It's honestly surreal," MacDonald says, adding, "It's a miracle that I'm here."
MacDonald says she failed so many times in the past in her quest to get to the Olympics that she almost quit the sport. She can't even find the words to describe how she feels moving a step closer to qualifying for Tokyo.
She thinks about the people who made this possible, including her favourite high school teacher who was also the wrestling coach. He was like a second father and inspired her to start wrestling and later to become a teacher.
"I feel like I'm in a dream right now. I can't tell you how many times I've dreamt of this and had nightmares about it."
MacDonald has been one of the top wrestlers in Canada for the past decade. She's won three world championship medals including a gold in 2012. But at these same Olympic trials in 2012 and 2016, she always came up short and didn't make the Olympic team.
So, on this day in Niagara, December 7, 2019, which also happens to be her birthday, the tears start rolling down her face. "I was born this day and my dreams came true this day," MacDonald says, her voice cracking.
MacDonald says several of the students and teachers from her school follow her wrestling career on Facebook and sent text messages to show their support.
Students learn lessons from both the wins and the losses, she says. MacDonald recalls when she lost at the trials before Rio in 2016, the homeroom teacher advised the students to be gentle with her.
"When you put everything on the line and your dream is crushed, it physically hurts. Your soul hurts because you lost something that you wanted so badly," MacDonald says. She adds, "[The students] were so compassionate. They didn't saying anything and that was saying a lot. "
Before these latest Olympic trials, MacDonald thought her wrestling days were over after doctors had to reconstruct her shoulder. "My arm wouldn't respond because once you go through so much trauma, your brain literally shuts down."
"The biggest thing that I hope any child takes away from this is you follow your dreams, and you just keep going until you aren't capable of doing it any longer."
Still, two days after leaving hospital, she was back training. "If it meant I was going to train until my arm came off then that was what was going to happen."
During the pandemic, MacDonald has had other priorities beyond training and the Olympics: taking care of her newborn baby.
In May, MacDonald will be looking to finally book her ticket to Tokyo. She needs to finish in the top two at a qualifying event in Bulgaria.
MacDonald says she doesn't have "the perfect story" but the struggles she's endured are crucial for children to hear. Sometimes you don't quite have the Hollywood ending, but you shouldn't stop trying.
"The biggest thing that I hope any child takes away from this is you follow your dreams, and you just keep going until you aren't capable of doing it any longer."