Walking Wednesdays & Trotting Thrusdays

Presenting (drum roll please) "Walking Wednesday!"

We kicked off the kids walking program with a bang on Wednesday at Munroe Elementary. Chantay, Jeannine, Rachel and I started out by setting everything up, from educational posters, to balloons, and snacks. Soon the parent volunteers showed up. I greeted Hilda one of the volunteers as she spoke to me ecstatic to be a part of today's activities.

We quickly mobilized to encourage the kids to start walking around the field as they read the educational posters, talked to their friends and got tallied for the walking class competition. I found the event very energetic kids were running telling me "hey! hey! that's my seven lap!". It became a very positive event were even staff from school, parents and everyone got involved jogging or walking with kids, high-fiving kids as they walked and just cheering them on.

My team and I had a blast walking around talking to the enthusiastic kids. However, at one point my team had to leave and set up at Knapp Elementary. This was tough because both events overlapped each other. Soon the bell rang and all the kids ran in but of course some still wanted to keep on walking :) .

After everyone was gone it was time to clean up and take the posters and other materials to the other school so we could quickly use them for the next event. I'm interrupted in the middle of this by a voice that says "Hey Mr.!...can you get my backpack from the playground?" It was the voice of a young boy from 1st grade i believe he had been left behind. I got his backpack and to make sure he got to class o.k. i walked with him inside. He told me that his name was Alex but i could also call him Alexander. Its so refreshing how kids are so open.

I dropped him off in class and quickly rushed to Knapp Elementary. I got there and the event was almost over! Jeannine and I had planned a surprise to bring more fun to the kids at Knapp. Since, the mascot from this school was a knight i decided to dress up as a knight. I had not seen the costume before that day and believed it to be a lot less silly than it actually was. The costume consisted of a silver vest and helmet just made of fabric. Also, it came with every knight's best friend. A white stuffed animal horse...jajaja. I was cracking up as i was putting it on in the parking lot.

I got to the scene with my horse and all the kids swarmed me. I began joking around with the kids and parents about them riding my horse and so on. The kids really enjoyed having their school mascot there and I had a ton of fun.


Julian at Castro Elementary!

I would like to keep this short and only focus on one story that was very special.

Here we did the same drill of setting up and we were ready to get started long before the event was scheduled to start. Soon, a young boy showed up and we quickly encouraged him to walk. I walked and talked with him about sports and being physically active. We really became good friends. He told me that his name is Julian and that he always walks to school.

As we interacted I saw a lot of myself in him. It was funny how much I was learning from him. I started understanding as i kept on talking to him that everyone just wants to be listened to and acknowledged. Soon after more students started joining us. I met a lot of kids and started introducing them to each other and just formed this great group energy.

The whole event continued for more than an hour and Julian still stuck with me like a champion. I asked him "so how do you like this?'' he responds "oh I love walking!...I'm always walking everywhere...". Julian kept on walking with me even when the other students would leave to go play in the playground. There were some funny moments when other kids would ask Julian " Is he your dad?" jajaja...he would respond "no, he's my friend".

Today was an incredibly successful walking day that almost all students participated!

Oh yeah, also 4 news and other media covered the event. The kids loved the idea of being in front of the camera and being famous. :)

I feel very grateful to have had the opportunity to meet all of the great kids from all the three school it was truly the best thing of the whole project.