Healthy School Environment
Located in the heart of Columbia, within walking distance of multiple fast food restaurants, and the age of video games, Swansfield puts a great deal of emphasis on getting outdoors, walking , and creating a healthy school environment by focusing on the health and well being of faculty and students through multiple fitness programs, which include our Fitnessthon school fundraiser, Fitness Fridays, Active Recess, and Girls on the Run.
The Fitness Thon was our primary fundraiser this year. Students participated in physical activity for 90 minutes on October 27, 2017 and the school benefited form their healthy workout.
Swansfield Sriders on Fitness Fridays is our recess walking and running club. Students and staff walk or run around the schools quarter-mile path during recess as many times as they can. On Fitness Fridays parent volunteers hand out special Striders cards and then mark the card each time the student completes the lap. After completing 4 laps or 1 mile, the student earns a special Striders dog tag necklace. The Dog Tag reads "I am a Swansfield Strider." Then, for each mile completed, thereafter, the students earn running tokens to add to their chains. Sometimes hey also earn small prizes. We encourage the parent volunteers to walk or run a lap with their student at the end of recess.
Active Recess is a daily program where students have to walk a quarter mile at the beginning of recess.
Students love to run in the annual Turkey Trout.
Girls on the Run is an afterschool program for girls in grades 3 to 5 to prepare them for a 5K run and build self esteem at the same time. The twenty girls participating in this program stay after school for an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Staff members were seen wearing FitBits or pedometers from Virgin Pulse which keep track of the steps they've walked during the day. A minimum goal set of 7,000 steps a day has been set for the the entire staff. Until last year the county rewarded staff members who meet this daily goal each quarter of the school year.
The Green Beanz, Swansfield's green team, will organize two education awareness poster campaigns, One will promote"Being Healthy" through exercise and good eating habits, and the other will promote "Staying Healthy" though hand washing.