The Four Minute Mile
Welcome back to Term 3. We are at the midpoint of the year, and as I mentioned in my short note before the term started, what I love most about this point is not the half already painted but the half that isn't: a full semester still ahead, and so much possible within it.
Our term began with a great deal of fun, spirit and competition at our Athletics Carnivals. It may have been the weather that pushed the events into Term 3, but I found myself thinking what a wonderful way it was to open a term, with all of that energy on display. We often attribute learning to what happens in the classroom, but we must always connect it to events like these, because the growth they produce in our young people is every bit as important in my view. Just think of the grit, resilience, teamwork, kindness, determination and problem solving developed across those three days. Superb!
The Senior School Careers events have been another highlight of these opening weeks. Enjoy taking the time to read about them in this edition and do pop onto our socials to find out more.
A STORY YOUR CHILDREN HAVE HEARD THIS TERM
I told the story of Roger Bannister at our first staff gathering of the term, and I have told it at our Years 3 to 6, Middle School and Senior School assemblies over the first two weeks, so it may well have already reached your dinner table. It was inspired by a book I read over the break, The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb.
The story resonates strongly with our theme of Possibility, and with mid-year behind us it presents a great chance to consider what obstacles, or miles, we might try to overcome this semester. Here is the short version.
For the whole of recorded history, the four minute mile was considered beyond human capability. Physiologists theorised the body could not sustain the pace, and the world record sat frozen just above four minutes for nine years while the best milers on earth fell short. The great Australian John Landy ran 4:02 again and again and described the barrier as a brick wall. Then came Roger Bannister, a 25 year old junior doctor who trained in half hour lunch breaks between ward rounds. He studied the science, concluded the wall was in the mind rather than the body, and on a windy evening in May 1954 he ran 3:59.4.
Bannister mile race footage here
The best part of the story is what happened next. Forty six days later, Landy, the brick wall man himself, ran 3:57.9. His legs had not grown longer. His lungs had not grown bigger. What changed was what he believed was available to him. More than a thousand runners have since been through the barrier, including teenagers as young as 15. And remarkably, just last Saturday in London, British runner Josh Kerr broke the mile world record itself, running 3:42.66.
Josh Kerr's record run here
Seven decades on, the event Bannister made possible is still being remade by people willing to ask whether the current limit is the real one.
THE CHALLENGE FOR OUR STUDENTS
I explained to our students that every one of us is carrying a four minute mile of our own: the audition they will never go for, the hand they will never put up, the team they will never make, the subject they have quietly decided is beyond them. The challenge I have set our young people this term is to pick one wall and run at it.
I explained to them why it matters beyond themselves. When you break your wall, you become someone else's Bannister. A friend watches you do the hard thing and suddenly believes they can do theirs. That is how belief moves through our All Saints community: one brave person, then everybody. It is true of a running field in 1954 and it is true of a Year 5 classroom this term.
CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION AT HOME
Possibility is our school theme this year, and the Bannister story is what it looks like up close. If it comes home with your children, here are four threads worth pulling.
The first is the language we use about our own limits. I was never a maths person is a four minute mile sentence, and children collect those sentences from the adults they love. It is a powerful thing for a young person to hear a parent say instead: I found that hard too, and here is what I did about it. It is more powerful still to let them watch you working at something hard right now. Nothing teaches possibility like seeing it attempted at close range.
The second is that evidence beats encouragement. Bannister's run changed Landy not because it was inspiring but because it was proof. When your child has decided something is beyond them, generic encouragement like you can do anything rarely moves the needle. What works far better is proof: seeing someone like them do the very thing. Find them their proof: the cousin who missed the team last year and made it this year, the older sibling who also found reading slow at first, your own story of the thing you once could not do.
The third is simply to ask. Ask your child what they have quietly decided is a wall. You may be surprised by the answer, and by how long they have been carrying it. Most walls, examined with the people they are most comfortable with, turn out to be four minute miles.
The fourth is to remember how the barrier actually fell, because it describes our role at All Saints as much as it does yours at home. Bannister did not run alone; two teammates set his pace and told him the truth about it. That is what we try to be for your children every day: honest pacemakers, not the ones out in front doing the work for them. And he did not find four extra minutes in one heroic effort; he found two seconds, in lunch breaks, over years. A full semester of small, well-paced weeks, at school and at home, is exactly how walls come down.
WELCOMING MR MARK SOLOMONS
Much of our thinking about what is possible in learning at All Saints will be shaped this semester by the newest member of our Executive team. This term Mark Solomons commences as our first Director of Teaching and Learning. The role is new for All Saints and it exists for a simple reason. We believe in one school, with a learning journey that is coherent and connected from Pre-Prep to Year 12, where every sub school contributes to a single story. Someone needs to hold that whole story and cast a whole school lens across teaching, learning and the professional growth of our staff. That is Mark's brief, and he will lead much of the work within the Learning That Matters pillar of Blueprint 2026+.
Mark and his family are from England, and he joins us after well over a decade in international schools, most recently in senior leadership. He has begun with a listening tour and aims to visit every teacher in the school this semester, partly to get a finger on the pulse of learning at All Saints and partly to identify the great practice that already lives in our classrooms so it can be shared and leveraged across the school. In a community of this size, the best ideas are rarely in one place. Mark's job is to find them and to share them. He also writes regularly on teaching and leadership at his Substack, Lead Time.
Mark arrives with his wife Jade and their children, Grace and Henry. Please make the whole Solomons family welcome.
SEE YOU AT THE FAIR!
Finally, a shoutout to our P&F Leaders at Large, Kat and David Pearson, and their outstanding team of Fair Committee members for the countless hours of preparation behind this weekend's event. There will be time to debrief properly in our next Saints Alive, but for now the best thing we can all do is support the Fair by attending, and for many of you, by volunteering. I can't wait!
In our fortieth year, it is worth remembering that our school itself began as a belief in something that did not yet exist. Possibility is our founding story, and every carnival, every classroom and every Fair is another page of it.
Have a wonderful weekend and see you at the Dunk Tank.
Matt Corbett
Principal
