Running 3,000 Miles to California without Leaving School
Plainfield Memorial School, Plainfield, CT
Students at Connecticut's Plainfield Memorial School are undertaking a unique challenge: they're running 3,000 miles - all the way to California (figuratively speaking, of course). Students aren't actually leaving the school, but, as their physical education teacher reports, they're involved in a fun project that holds promise for a healthy outcome.
During the program, the students ran outside every day at the beginning of their recess. Since students only have PE once a week this was a way of working in daily acitivity. All students ran at least one quarter mile, although many chose to run more. Each week a different student was the mile recorder for their class. They recorded mileage on a special paper that they turned in to the PE teacher who then logged the miles and shaded them onto their class's gridded sneaker bulletin board displayed in the school corridor. This bulletin board was titled, "Can We Run to California?" (3,000 miles the distance from CT to CA). The kids could see which class was in the lead and that gave them an incentive to run more laps at recess.
The kids were especially excited about the challenge because of an unconventional reward: the two classes that run the most miles will be allowed to fasten their PE teacher to the wall with duct tape. The PE teacher is looking forward to being part of the prize, and joked that the kids have promised to bring her some healthy foods so she doesn't get hungry!
The excitement about eating healthy foods and leading active lives is truly making students feel good about the hard work they're doing and the improvement they're seeing in themselves. Students have even approached their PE teacher to tell her how good they feel. "I'm so full of pride," said their teacher. "This is the reason I teach physical education - it's all about teaching the whole student."
