The French Ministry of Education mandates the elementary curriculum for all subjects taught at LILA. For PE, the program is broken into four areas. One area of the program relates to a student’s ability to successfully be able to perform a timed/measured activity. The activity that LILA used this year to cover this area of the curriculum was cross country training. Students had to essentially build their endurance running. To bring meaning to this very important, albeit at times, challenging “sell” for teachers, the pedagogical team and the teachers decided to organize the first ever inter-campus cross country games. Over the course of two days, all four campuses met at Griffith Park where LILA held its very own cross country competition. The first day was reserved for Cycle Two students (kindergarten, first, and second grade) and day two was for Cycle Three students (third, fourth, and fifth grade). The event was a huge success! Students ran, classmates cheered for their friends, and teachers saw the long unit on running come to a very successful end. All could see that next year the kids would see ahead of time what they were working towards and really “train” for the games… Thanks to the help of talented parent photographer Cynthia Smalley, and the more amateurish attempts of both Jennifer Dermer, English Program Coordinator, and myself, we were able to cover all the events. The slide show below, that I prepared for you, is a combination of all these pictures.