Christie Mileage Markers

By: Angela O'Brian, Christie Elementary, Plano ISD

Our diverse campus is one of the largest in our district. We are a full Title 1 school with about 60% of our students economically disadvantaged and all students receive free breakfast every morning. Much of the resources at our school are focused on low-performing students; however, with new accountability guidelines including growth of achieving students, we realize the need to push all our students so that they can excel to the next level. Despite all the challenges and obstacles that lay before our kids, we hope to provide them with an opportunity to learn about proper nutrition, goal setting, and identify activities that each student enjoys as the correlation between being physically active and academic achievement go hand-in-hand.

In the 2018-2019 school year, we started an afterschool running club program as a means to provide students with opportunities to grow physically while providing a safe environment for students to interact with one another. The results were astounding as we had on average 60-90 students regularly attend our program 4 times a week. While those numbers were great, it still wasn't enough. How could we reach more kids while providing them with those same opportunities? This year, we utilized the EZ Scan program and devoted the first 20 minutes of our PE program to running outside. We developed a variety of incentives for students to obtain and even discussed long-term goals. During this time, we've observed the constant excitement and encouragement from students thanks to the Healthy Zone School Program.