Here Comes Seabiscuit

After watching last week's Preakness, I'm thinking like a handicapper. Four weeks of school left -- we're in the home stretch. On a race course, the home stretch is where you find out what a horse is made of. You can learn a lot about students, too, by the way they respond to the home stretch. 

Most of them finish in the middle of the pack. They run a respectable race, but they're never a threat to win. They didn't train hard enough, or they don't have the right bloodlines, or the track didn't suit them. There are horses for courses, jockeys say. That same girl who was the star of my creative writing class was screaming obscenities at her math teacher last week.

Some of them give up. That happened to one of my students last week -- or maybe it really happened earlier, when he missed seven out of ten school days for mysterious reasons. He came back promising to make up four quizzes on Friday, but then he missed my class on Thursday, and I had a bad feeling. When I saw him in the halls Friday morning, I almost stopped him to remind him about the quizzes, but I was in a hurry, so I didn't. Sure enough, he cut my class that day, so now he can't make up the quizzes, and his average has dropped below 40 percent. His race is over. He was never one of the favorites, but it made me sad to see him quit.

The favorites often lead wire-to-wire. They break fast out of the gate, they run easily in the lead, and they finish strong. Why? Like  the best thoroughbreds, they usually have good bloodlines and excellent trainers. As colts and fillies they learned to run hard, but stay under control. They come from the wealthiest stables, the ones with winning traditions. That's not always enough, though. I've got another boy  who's been trailing the field all semester. He's very bright, but he fails to hand in work. Something's wrong; he's off his feed. I don't think he'll fail -- he's been gaining ground in the last couple of weeks. But it's too late for him to finish in the money.

Sometimes early speed kills. I've had students who looked like Secretariat in the first quarter mile, but they fade in the stretch, especially now that the weather is warm and the sun is out after supper and summer is so close you can taste it. They coast in, finishing a respectable fifth, but the wise bettor will stay away from them in future races. No stamina.

Then there are the closers, the ones who come thundering up in the final furlong. They start from way back in the pack, when the race seems over, but suddenly they're eating up the turf with impossibly long strides, making the leaders look like they're holding still, nostrils flaring, stretching their necks and heads toward the finish line. It's breathtaking. There's nothing more exciting than a longshot who pays off. 

I saw it happen in my honors English class last fall. A girl who looked lost all semester suddenly lit up, and here comes Seabiscuit!  She was asking the best questions, acing the quizzes, writing the finest essays. It seemed to start when we challenged each student to give a speech about a lesson he or she had learned. Hers was simple: She had realized that to succeed in high school, she would have to work harder than she'd ever worked before.