Olympic Athlete Comes to Grade 6!

Today grade six was lucky to have a surprise visit from Benoit Gaudet, Olympic athlete and world class boxer.

I would love to say that I had gone to get him to come and discuss his Olympic experience, but he came with Drummondville Radio station "Rock Detente" to give the teachers a surprise present - a week's subscription to his new gym! The PPO entered the school in a city-wide Teacher Appreciation week contest and won this for the staff. All our thanks!

I took the opportunity to ask Mr Gaudet to come and speak to us about his Olympic experience. Graciously agreed and spoke to the class in English about his travels, his competitions, when he started his career and what his training routine is like. The students had a number of interesting questions.

What I wanted to highlight of his impromptu discussion was that he credits his success to his effort, and not his aptitude. He told us that when he started boxing he did not set himself the goal of going to the Olympics: he wanted to be a hockey player. Success followed success, and he found that he had the ability and the drive to go further. More that once, he let the class know that discipline made the difference, and that his sport had offered him opportunities to go places and see things he wouldn't have been able otherwise.

A big thanks you on this Monday morning to Mr Gaudet, and to the PPO for bringing him to us!