One of the most common New Year’s resolutions is to get fit, and become healthier. For the teachers at Deerwood School, this was indeed their top goal as a group for 2015.
On the first day back after Christmas holiday, Todd Harwood, half-time physical education teacher and half-time vice-principal, started a challenge between the teachers.
The challenge saw teachers group into two different teams, 12 people on each, and the first team to virtually walk to Winnipeg won. “We provided all the staff with pedometers, all the steps you took were compiled, and everyone’s steps counted towards the walk,” Harwood explained.
The Northern Regional Healthy Authority (NRHA) donated the pedometers to the facility. Bruce Kentz of the NRHA says the health authority bought a bunch of pedometers a couple years ago, and thought it would be a good project to get involved with.
Krentz says even if someone doesn’t stick with a pedometer, at least by using them for a while they will learn how many steps they should be taking a day. “Some people don’t keep using pedometers for a long time, but even if you use it for a week you know how much you should be walking, and how active you should be everyday.” A good goal is 10,000 steps every day.
The teachers picked Winnipeg for their first challenge, to virtually check out a new site in the city. “We went on Google Maps and mapped out our walk. Our goal was to get to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. We wanted to virtually check it out. We walked there from Deerwood School, and it was like 750 kilometres.”
Log Your Steps, the program the instructors are using for these challenges, even includes different features. One example Harwood says comes in handy is the step converter. “There’s a cool thing about the program for people who swim in the morning, we have some teachers who swim in the morning before school. With swimming you can’t wear the pedometer since there’s no steps, but what it does, it takes how long you swam for, and then converts it to a rough number of steps.”
The walk, expected to take about two weeks finished on Jan. 13, a few days ahead of schedule. Harwood went on to explain this fitness challenge has also caught the student’s attention. “For me, selfishly as a long-time physical education teacher, but also as the vice principal, I love the fact that we’re role modelling active lifestyles, and we’re showing we’re having fun doing it. Don’t get me wrong, I love that our staff are being active, but to have kids see us being active is the best part.”
A handful of the participants went out on their own and bought more pedometers for the students. These ones are being used for educational purposes, not fitness.
“Some teachers have been using it in ways I never would have guessed. They’ve been using it for measurement, like how many steps in a metre, how many steps to do a loop, how long is the loop. They’ve been using it for place value. So if you’re learning about numbers, ten, hundred, thousands, it’s not uncommon to get a couple thousand steps in a day, they talk about the place value with numbers,” said Harwood.
Harwood said the students have been the biggest cheerleaders for the teachers, and even during indoor recesses students are walking with the teachers to help get them more steps.
The school may have finished their walk to Winnipeg, but they’re not stopping just there. From Winnipeg now they will be walking to Los Vegas, which Hardwood believes will talk about a month o steps.
After the next challenge, the gym teacher-slash-vice-principal hopes other people in the community will start these challenges too. “I’m going to challenge other businesses like banks and Wal-Mart. This is very, very, very easy to get started. We may be throwing the challenge out to other schools, school to school. Our next walk is longer, and will take us about a month. After we’re done that one we might throw out the challenge to see if we can find some pedometers for other schools. ”
Krentz says the NRHA would be more than willing to help with pedometers for future walks, as it ties in with their vision statement. “Our vision at the Northern Health Region is healthy people, healthy north. Walking is a step toward overall health and pedometers are a great way to motivate people to get out and do it.”
For any person or business that wants to learn more about the Log Your Steps program, Harwood is available to help. “I would be more than willing to show you where to put you in line to access the program. If anyone has any questions, feel free to call me at the school.”
