Walk to School Day for 2023

The Your Move team had a planning meeting on the 9th of May to discuss the Walk to School day and to allocate jobs. Students decided that the National poster was too young for high school students and wanted a new poster. That job got allocated to the Community Health Nurse (me!).

We have attached the poster to the end of the story. One of our keen students went around the school and put up the posters. We also did a Facebook post the night before encouraging students to walk to school. It was also teamed up with free dress day, students and staff were encouraged to come to school in their active wear.

We had a range of prizes that students could win if they walked to school or caught the bus. We had canteen vouchers and a range of Act Belong Commit merchandise like drink bottles, baseball caps and pens. Students got a raffle ticket if they walked to school.

Students agreed to meet outside the Health Centre at 0745 hrs on the 19th to get raffle tickets and then stand at the gates. Unfortunately, we forgot to organise one last meeting the day before to remind everyone, so we only had 3 students come and assist Michelle, the P & C president and the Community Health Nurse. As a consequence, many students would not have got a raffle ticket as people giving out raffle tickets got overwhelmed with the number of students walking.

Our new running club set off on their run and we also gave them a ticket each in the raffle.

Prizes were drawn during homeroom and winning tickets were announced over the PA. It was a fun day and we had lots of students walking. Some 260 raffle tickets were handed out that morning.

Mrs Manolas commented that she wondered how many students get dropped off at school in the morning and then walk home in the afternoon. I will remember this at the end of the year and ask during the Hands Up survey. It will be interesting to see if there is any difference.