"One Thing" for Mon. Oct. 28

I thought I would share the results of our "Walk to School" campaign that finished up on Friday. One of things I am proud about is my commitment to the environment. Until recently, I biked to school almost every day. This wasn't always the case for me, but I was inspired and "kicked into gear" to do it by other riders who showed me that it could be done. It just took a bit of a leap to try.  

At Diefenbaker, it is one of my hopes as a vice principal to pass on some of my passion for the environment to our students. So, when we received information and posters from the people at Dash BC about their iWalk week in the second week of October, we thought it would be a great thing to do as a school. Unfortunately, our grade 6/7 students were at camp during that period. We still wanted to do it, however,so we waited until after Thanksgiving. Who would've thought the weather would have been so cooperative in late October? 

We did a similar campaign back in June and in that week we had a total of 70% of students either walking, riding or rolling to school. We also allowed those who are coming from far away (due to Late French Immersion) to drive part way and then walk in the rest of the way. The highest class was at 100% for the week-as they were all bringing their bikes for some class bike rides. The lowest was at 37%. Being June we decided that we would give out Freezies to both the primary and intermediate classes that had the best percentage of walkers over the course of the week.  

 

This time, we did not go for Freezies, but gave out "The Golden Shoe" trophy again as well as some funky sunglasses as prizes. Our results were good, but not as high as in June. This time our results were a bit more consistent across the classes and we had an overall rate of 60%. The highest was 80% and the lowest 43%. Keeping track of the numbers wasn't that hard to do (thanks to an excel spreadsheet) and the student runners from my class who would just go around during silent reading each afternoon to see who was absent and who walked). Hopefully when we do it again this year, these totals will be something we can build on and we can help see students and parents that it's a great way to get to school.