Walk the Andes to the Amazon with Walking Wednesdays

This year we will be exploring South America while we log miles trying to top last year's total of 13347 miles!  

 

The Stoneleigh Elementary PTA is entering its fifth year of an award winning PTA program called Walking Wednesdays. Since it inception in 2004, Stoneleigh Elementary School students have logged 36,012 miles.  Each year the children choose a destination , such as China, Africa or Europe, to explore during their walk.  Children who walk or bicycle to and from school record the number of blocks they travel.  After converting the blocks to miles, the school totals for each week are recorded on a map where the students can watch their progress.  

Members of the 4th and 5th grade after school Walking Wednesday Club make announcements each Wednesday reporting our current travel location based on the accumulated “miles”. Along with our location, the club members share information about the geography, history and culture that make the location unique.  Our bulletin board in the gym-cafeteria lobby and the quarterly Walking Wednesday newsletter keeps the school current as well.

A majority of the Stoneleigh Elementary school students live less than a mile from the school and therefore do not have bus service.  The SES PTA promotes walking to and from school in lieu of he ubiquitous Mom and Dad taxi service that contributes to a nationwide trend of a mere 15% of the nation’s children walking to school versus 50% in 1969.  Stoneleigh’s Walking Wednesday program is based after others throughout the United States as well as abroad.  Such programs are designed to promote the many benefits of walking including:

• Decreasing the number of cars on the roads around the school make a safer and less polluted environment for everyone.
• Teaching that walking is great way to exercise!  Children arrive at school ready to learn, come home with less pent up energy and develop a lifelong healthy habit.
• Helping children and adults build connections with their community to increase child safety and social growth.

Recently, our work has expanded to examine ways to increase safety along the children's route to school through the Safe Routes to School Program.  SR2S is a federal program empowering communities to make bicycling and walking to school a safe and routine activity once again.  In the fall of 2006 a grant was pursued to improve overcrowded sidewalks in the "school zone" (the area immediately surrounding the school).  As a result of our efforts, Baltimore County Public Schools added a new sidewalk on school grounds and widened the existing sidewalk along Pemberton Road during the summer of 2007.  That year Walking Wednesdays was awarded the Best Safety Awareness Program from the Baltimore County PTA Council.        

 During the 2007-2008 school year a task force was formed to partner with the Baltimore County Department of Public Works and study possible infrastructure improvements to the entire two mile radius surrounding the school eligible for Federal SR2S funding.  Engineering solutions such as sidewalk improvements, traffic calming and speed reduction improvements, and crossing improvements are being considered to make children's walk to school safer!  

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