A member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, Adrian Dantley, now spends his days working as a crossing guard helping school children safely across the road in his home-town of Silver Spring, Maryland.
The 6-foot-5, six-time NBA All-Star admits it is an unusual next career choice, but he says he is very happy to be giving out high fives and encouragement to the kids.
In Britain, about half the local school systems have some sort of informal, incentive program to encourage walking, according to Roger L. Mackett, a professor at the Center for Transport Studies at University College in London.
Fear is a factor that keeps some students in London from walking to school. The BBC reported a survey done by the charity Living Streets: A total of 48% of London’s children said “stranger danger” was a concern – higher than the national average of 39%.
Incentives to get kids moving vary. Students at two London schools can earn free movie tickets and shopping vouchers by walking to school. Along the route, they swipe cards through machines that record their route. The number of walking students increased by 18 per cent, and more got to class on time. But more inventive is the Living Streets’ Dance Walk program and its character named Strider. In their link below, the pictures are the proof.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/world/europe/27bus.html
LECCO, Italy — Each morning, about 450 students travel along 17 school bus routes to 10 elementary schools in this lakeside city at the southern tip of Lake Como. There are zero school buses.
In 2003, to confront the triple threats of childhood obesity, local traffic jams and — most important — a rise in global greenhouse gases abetted by car emissions, an environmental group here proposed a retro-radical concept: children should walk to school.
They set up a ‘piedibus’ (literally foot-bus in Italian) — a bus route with a driver but no vehicle. Each morning a mix of paid staff members and parental volunteers in fluorescent yellow vests lead lines of walking students along Lecco’s twisting streets to the schools’ gates, Pied Piper-style, stopping here and there as their flock expands.
Lecco’s walking bus was the first in Italy, but hundreds have cropped up elsewhere in Europe and, more recently, in North America.
For the rest of this 2009 article by Elisabeth Rosenthal, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/world/europe/27bus.html
Canadian parents, by and large, walked to school when they were kids. Not so much for their own children. Fewer kids these days walk or bike to school. Active Healthy Kids Canada, in their recent ‘report card’, gives Canadian kids a D- on this physical activity.
While 58% of parents walked to school when they were children, only 28% of their own kids were doing the same today. “That’s a reduction of 50% in one generation,” said Dr. Mark Tremblay, chief scientific officer of Active Healthy Kids Canada. “High numbers of kids are being ferried to destinations within walking or biking distance.”
How to reverse this trend? Kelly Murumets of ParticipAction says parents need to get involved. Kids who are able to travel on foot or use pedal power can travel in groups with volunteer adults. “Kids are getting physical activity, they have social time, they’re with other kids, they’re safe because they’re supervised, (and) some of the parents who do work are able to make their way to the office,” Murumets said.
If kids walked for all trips less than one kilometer in distance, it would translate, on average, to 2,238 additional steps each day – or around 15 to 20 minutes of walking, Active Healthy Kids Canada noted.
Source of Chart:
“In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking on a tightrope”. (Henri Matisse) http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/tightrope.html
A Balance-Improving Exercise from Point ‘A’ to Point ‘B’:
Quoted from: Stealth Workout by Kathleen Trotter (http://www.kathleentrotter.com/), Globe and Mail, January 7, 2013.
followingfeet 