How Atlanta Track Club Maximizes Their Community Reach

Run clubs are advantageous for everyone involved—parents, teachers, kids, etc. There are so many benefits:

• Goal setting

• Habit formation

• Increased physical activity

• Fun

And these are just a few of them! Starting a run club because of these benefits is a no-brainer, but if you find yourself without the right tools, it can get a bit tricky – especially if you’re organizing run clubs for a whole community of people.

One way to organize your run club that makes all this much simpler is to use technology to manage, report, and track the data from your club. Our EZ Scan® app is the best tool that makes this easier at any given site or even across a whole community. EZ Scan helps you step back and see the bigger picture.

The EZ Scan^® “Community” feature provides a place for community leaders to track progress across any number of run club sites (be that schools, Y’s, clubs, or community events). Tracking progress helps ensure that all those parents, teachers, and kids involved are successful with their goals.

One example of a successful EZ Scan community using this feature is the Atlanta Track Club. Originally, Atlanta Track Club started with just 7 locations in the greater Atlanta area, but in a few short years, that number has worked up to 56! Keeping track of mileage for that many locations could be difficult, but with the EZ Scan app, tracking the entire Atlanta Track Club’s community miles is as simple as clicking a button. During the 2021-2022 school year, Atlanta Track Club recorded over 20,000 miles, averaging a whopping 20 miles per child across each of their locations.

As mentioned before, EZ Scan also provides progress reports for individual schools or locations. One such example is Kilometer Kids, the free running program for K-8 kids. Though Kilometer Kids is a part of the Atlanta Track Club community, each Kilometer Kids location individually tracks participants’ laps and helps them set their own goals. They were able to see if each child in their program ran 26.2 miles—the length of a marathon—over their 10-week season.

Top 10 Benefits of School Run Clubs

If you’re looking for a way to keep your kids engaged at school, participate in physical activity, and have fun while doing so, look no further than run clubs. They’re proven to work—just ask the 20,000+ schools around the world who offer run clubs. Kids aren’t the only ones who can benefit from a run club, either; it extends beyond to the teachers, volunteers, parents, and the community too! Though there are many, here are the top ten benefits/reasons to implement a school run club today.  

 

1.  Avoid Playground Hassles

Any recess monitor can attest that a variety of issues can stem from unstructured time spent on playgrounds. Children need close supervision during recess to avoid accidents and behavioral problems. After all, kids are just learning how to share, play nice, and get along with others. However, run clubs directly decrease playground troubles by releasing children’s energy and boosting moods. Though some incidents can’t be completely removed (kids will be kids!), run clubs help ensure recess stays a beneficial activity for children—and less of a hassle for teachers. 

2.  Reduce Childhood Obesity

Obesity can cause several health risks for children, both as children and later in life. Back in 2017–2018, a staggering total of 14.4 million children in the US were obese. To break it down even further, 13.4% of those children were 2-5 year-olds, while 20.3% were 6-11 year-olds. Run clubs help target and prevent obesity for elementary school children by encouraging regular exercise whenever possible—before class, after class, or during school through brain breaks, recess, and Physical Education.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic only worsened childhood obesity concerns. With fewer opportunities for regular exercise during this time, all BMI categories except underweight experienced significant weight rate increases. For severely obese children, they gained an average of 7.3 pounds over a 6-month period, compared to a weight gain of 2.7 pounds for healthy children. To reverse this negative trend, teachers are increasingly utilizing run clubs because of all the benefits. In fact, Fitness Finder’s Mileage Club® schools ran more than 7 million miles in the 2019–2020 school year despite the start of the pandemic. 

3.  Goal Setting

Run clubs allow children to track their achievements and earn rewards, which encourages them to strive for more. Mileage Club® uses an app called EZ Scan®; it tracks kids’ laps and collects data to keep them updated on how they’re doing. Most importantly, EZ Scan® allows teachers to set goals that are achievable for all students, whether they consider themselves to be active or not. This makes it easy for kids to recognize that they can do this and anything else they set their minds to, which is a great attribute to carry with them as they grow older. 

4.  Excitement/Engagement

When something is engaging and fun, kids will be more willing to participate—that’s what run clubs are all about! We want kids to enjoy exercise and have fun in this collaborative atmosphere, which is why school run clubs offer awards and incentives for achieving their goals.

"A study based in Canada from the 1990s found that adding rewards to their run club increased participation from children by 50%."

Recent studies have replicated that result.  For Mileage Club, we incentivize kids to participate by rewarding Toe Tokens—charms that come in a variety of colors and styles that kids love to display because of their hard work. Teachers that we’ve worked with agree that rewards keep kids motivated. They say that the kids are excited to run and can’t wait to do so!

5.  Reduce Sitting Time

Ever heard that sitting is the new smoking? While the phrase was originally coined to call out the sedentary lifestyle of adults through their desk jobs, driving, and TV watching, it’s applicable to children now as well. Between school and home, children are spending 60% of their day seated! Although seemingly harmless, sitting for extended periods of time can be quite harmful. For young girls who sit uninterrupted for just three hours, it can cause a major reduction in their vascular function (the body’s ability to carry blood through the veins and arteries). Because of these consequences, it’s important to get kids up and moving. 

6.  Brain Breaks

Run clubs provide children with the brain breaks necessary to divert their energy to a fun, stress-free activity, allowing them to reenter the classroom with their full attention. With shorter attention spans, kids need these short breaks to recoup back to the task at hand. In 2016, psychologist Karrie Godwin measured students’ attentiveness over the course of a class period. The results? Kids spent a quarter of the time distracted, meaning that shorter, bite-sized lessons with brain breaks in-between better help kids focus on their lessons and their teacher. Plus, the study promoted other benefits that brain breaks provide, such as decreased stress, an increase in productivity and brain function, and more opportunities for kids to socialize with each other. Run clubs achieve all three of these benefits, giving kids a healthy break with other students and placing them back into the classroom refreshed and ready to learn!  

7.  Learning Readiness

It’s undeniable that physical activity in a child’s day increases their ability to learn, and especially improves attention and memory. For example, one such study showed that physical fitness improved academic performance, and expressly called for schools to dedicate time in the day for gym and recess rather than scrapping those for more class time. As noted in the previous paragraph, physical activity only improves kids’ brain function by giving them an enjoyable outlet. Kids often bounce off the walls, so allowing them that time to burn off some extra energy means they can come back into the classroom with a better mindset. 

8. Habit Formation

Run clubs help children form healthy habits. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear lays out a four-step pattern to create habits that improve your health: 

• Cue—the trigger for a behavior
• Craving—the motivation behind wanting to do the habit
• Response—the performed habit
• Reward—the end goal

Run clubs follow a similar framework by making regular physical activity part of a child’s routine and providing them with a tangible reward, like Toe Tokens®, at the end. With this in place, children are already well on their way to creating healthy habits that are easy to continue later in life! We highly recommend reading chapter three of Clear’s book, which contains more information on habit formation, to apply these principles to your own plans.

 

9. Goal-Oriented Social Activity 

Sharon Hoover, a co-director of the University of Maryland-based National Center for School Mental Health, made it clear that schools “need to invest now in the mental health and well-being of our kids in a broad and comprehensive way—not just for children with learning disabilities and diagnosed mental health conditions, but for all students.” Run clubs are a great way to provide beneficial tasks to your more social students. They can lean into their communication and empathy strengths while they walk and talk with their peers. They can still achieve their goals and encourage the other kids to do the same. Run clubs are also easily adjusted to practice social-distancing guidelines; kids can still gain the benefits while maintaining safety for themselves and others!

10. Be Everyone’s Favorite Teacher

Obviously! Kids love it.  You’ll be changing their lives—and the lives of their parents and the community—for the better. With this fun group dynamic, you’ll be everyone’s favorite teacher. 

The benefits of a run club will greatly impact students, teachers, and the community. Whether you’re starting from scratch or improving an active program, we have everything you need. to help your students be active and have fun. Get started by downloading our FREE Run Club Guide. In no time, your students will be more active, and everyone involved will have a blast. 

Download Your Free Guide

Motivation and Habit Formation

I met a young middle school teacher a few months ago who wants to be successful. She has visions of her students coming back to visit her after they graduate high school and thanking her for the impact she made on their lives. Unfortunately, her day to day teaching experience makes her feel ineffective and frustrated. More and more of her students are disinterested, and sometimes even disobedient. To be a great instructor you need students who listen and desire to learn.

The solution to this problem is not new but requires planning, purpose, and some discipline. Successful students cultivate some or all of the habits that almost all successful people have: THEY EXERCISE, READ, SHOW UP (ATTENDANCE), AND EAT HEALTHY FOODS. The more habits students cultivate from this list, the more successful they will be.

A proven way to help create such “successful habits” is to create goals and then reward students when they attain the desired behavior. Teachers across the country find this works very well, and research bears this out.

That’s why we created the #1 selling award for run clubs, Toe Tokens® – colorful, plastic feet that kids love to collect.  Kids run miles and love it J, so they can get a Toe Token. 

Due to the success of Mileage Club®, and because of requests from teachers, we quickly followed up with awards for reading, attendance, and nutrition – which is also helping kids reach their goals.

 

Here is how it works:

1. Develop a plan to create routine activities around the desired goals for your classroom.
2. Layout the prescribed activities based on your goals and circumstances.
3. Following the idea of cue-habit-rewards made popular recently by Charles Duhigg (2012) and  now James Clear (2018), you then create:
1. A cue that tells the student when it is time to begin the habit/activity.
2. Clear instructions on what the activity consists of, without uncertainty.
3. An incentive plan to reward students at fixed intervals.
4. Design a system to measure progress.
5. Celebrate the goals met by distributing the awards earned.

Let’s look at how this works with Mileage Club (run club):

 

1.  Goal - my students will exercise more to increase their learning readiness and improve their health and mood.

 

• Create a program that allows every student to participate. 
• Allow each student to feel accomplished.

 

2.  Prescribed Activity – Start a running/walking club (Mileage Club).

• Create a course/track for the Mileage Club. (Our example will be a ¼ mile course around the playground.)
• Students run two times a week during recess (with an optional third day on Friday).
• Provide 20 minutes for each run.

3.  Cue - the recess bell.

• On Tuesday and Thursday, the students move around the track at whatever pace they can.
• Music can be played during this time to create a fun atmosphere.
• Incentive plan- every 5 miles (20 laps), a student earns a Toe Token.

 4.  Measuring – laps and total mileage will be tracked with the EZ Scan tracking software. 

5.  Celebration – awards day every Friday.

• On Friday, at lunch, all students who earned awards receive their Toe Tokens.
• A lanyard is also provided with the first Toe Token so a student can display their awards.
• Students who desire to run more may do so on Friday.

This goal/reward method has worked for decades across the country for run clubs, as well as reading plans, and behavior programs. Such programs are easy to create and implement. And, they help students create those necessary “successful habits.”

Stop being frustrated with your current efforts and start making a massive difference in your students' lives - just like you dreamed about in college - with Mileage Club, EZ Scan, and Toe Tokens! Fitness Finders has decades of experience to help you begin today.

References:

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg from 2012

Atomic Habits by James Clear from 2018

Kilometre Club Spotlight

Mileage Club® is the #1 Run Club for kids in North America. But have you ever wondered how our Canadian neighbors, who use the metric system, run a Mileage Club? We talked to Claudine Lukawesky in Toronto, Ontario who was happy to share information about her school’s Kilometre Club (KC)!

"Kilometre Club was started at our school, Northlea EMS, approximately 10 years ago! It started as a pre-practice to help students prepare for Track & Field tryouts, but quickly became a Club for any child. Our school has approximately 800 students from Junior Kindergarten through Grade 8. It is French Immersion, English, and Developmentally Delayed tracked."

"KC is run solely with parent and student volunteers, although we have staff members present for liability reasons. We only purchase our goods through Fitness Finders® due to safety reasons – we like that you make your products with no lead in the chains or plastic charms, and that you now offer the safe LaceLink™ Lanyards."

"We always start KC on a Wednesday so we can make reminder announcements on Monday and Tuesday. (Many people would forget if we started on a Monday. 😊) KC “runs” for 13 mornings from 8-8:30, always ending on a Friday."

"Students are encouraged to run, walk, hop – we’ve even had kids in wheelchairs being pushed – around our 200 metre track. Every time they go around the track, they receive a popsicle stick. When I ring my cowbell at 8:30, students finish the lap they’re on and head to the “Attendance Table” where we record their number of sticks under their classroom teacher’s name. We do this for two reasons: to track the number of kilometres and to track KC attendance. At the end of the 13 days, the class with the most attendance wins a pizza lunch!"

"After the Attendance Table, students head over to the “Charm Table,” and pick out one charm for their bracelet. It doesn’t matter how many laps they’ve completed, all the children receive one charm per day of participation. This is done because we want ALL kids to participate and feel equal. Not everyone is an elite athlete, but at Kilometre Club you are treated like an athlete! We are just so proud of the effort from all the kids and want to focus on that instead of making it all about competition. Although, we do still encourage competition within yourself – and to get your class to participate to win the pizza lunch!"

"I have had so many parents thank me because of how our program has made their child feel included. Knowing that one charm is given out per day of participation, and not by number of laps, makes children feel so special that they are happy to come out for exercise. We have had kids with anxiety issues, and doing Kilometre Club before school helps them feel more relaxed. Children with ADD/ADHD burn off some extra energy so they can focus better in class."

"I'm going into my 10th year of Kilometre Club, and each year it is an honour to have kids in the neighbourhood see me and come thank me for doing this program that they look forward to every year! Benefits of KC are that children are encouraging one another to participate; they are completing laps with friends; and, the older grades get to do a lot of the organizing and help out with the younger grades. Thanks to Fitness Finders for making safe products that encourage children to be active and do something!!"

Customer Profile - Betty Kern: Physical Education Teacher

Fitness Finders® Customer Profile: 

- Betty Kern, MS, CSCS

Ohio Elementary Physical Education Teacher of the Year, 2017

"I teach Physical Education to 4th - 6th graders at 

Schrop Intermediate School in the Springfield Local School District 
just south of Akron, Ohio." 

What's Been a Highlight of Your Teaching Career?

"A highlight of my teaching career came just recently after being awarded the Ohio Elementary Physical Education Teacher of the Year.  My school had a surprise assembly for me.  They decorated the gym with running shoes that the students had colored and written messages on.  In addition, our custodian made me a larger than life running woman for the gym.  Every student in the school also wrote me a letter...all 570 of them!  These letters are so touching and demonstrated to me that the students learn and absorb so much more than I'd ever imagined.  At the assembly, 28 students read aloud their letters to me in front of the whole school.  It was an amazing, moving moment and one that I will never forget!"

What's Your Favorite Teaching Tip?

"My favorite teaching tip is to remember that what you are teaching your students today could be brand new to them!  It might be the first time they have ever experienced that topic, skill, activity, etc.  Remember how hard it is to learn something new.  Teach it to them as if they have never seen it before.  Be patient and be willing to slow down and make sure everyone understands. The extra time will pay huge dividends!"

How Do You Use Fitness Finders® Products?

"Fitness Finders® Awards are used in our Running Clubs throughout the year.  Students earn a Sneaker for every 50 points they earn and every 5 miles they run during a running club season.  Each week students look forward to receiving their awards! Many students ask to run extra laps to earn extra points so ultimately they can earn extra Sneaker Awards!

The 1st, 2nd, & 3rd charms are also used for grade awards at the club races. 

Fitness Finders® Awards are also used at our "all school" races held during the school day.  If a student improves his/her mile time, then an award is given.  For example, Turkey Awards are used for the Turkey Trot, Snowflake Awards for the Winter Fun Run, etc.  One child last year said that was the first award he'd ever earned in school! He was so excited!  

Fitness Finders® Walker Awards are used in Morning Walking Club when students reach various mile levels.  

Lastly, we use the EZ Scan® App for our walking club and for our upcoming Mile Tracker Challenge."

Fitness Finders® appreciates Betty Kern's support and commitment to excellence.

Running and Autism

Colin Nichols attends Hanover-Horton Elementary in Hanover, Michigan. Colin loves participating in his school’s Mileage Club®, and he runs – a lot. Colin completed 30 miles during MileageClub® when he was in 1^st grade. He more than doubled his mileage and racked up a total of 70 miles in 2^nd grade. At the end of the season, when the school announced that he logged 70 miles (almost twice as many miles as the runner-up for the year), his classmates cheered wildly.

And that’s a big deal.

Colin has autism, and school has not always been an easy place for him. Colin’s mom, Carrie, commented that his classmates “have seen Colin at his worst.” Which made it even more meaningful that they witnessed his disciplined efforts, and celebrated that success with him. Carrie Nichols reflected that Colin showed signs of athleticism from a very young age, but PE class in school was stressful for him. Colin is easily overwhelmed by the chaos and activity of PE class and organized sports. But running gives Colin the physical release he needs, and gives him pride in his abilities. Colin’s mom also noted academic benefits from Mileage Club® for her son. Both she and Colin’s teacher observed that Colin would come back into the classroom from Mileage Club® much calmer and ready to learn, having released on the track his extra energy and pent up frustrations from the day.

Alison Wade wrote in an article published by runnersworld.com, “In running, social interaction is common, but it’s not required for success. Running does not require mastery of complex techniques, intricate rules, or the principles of teamwork—but it does offer the opportunity to be a part of a team.”

Russell Lang, Ph.D., the executive director of the Clinic for Autism Research, Evaluation and Support at Texas State University in San Marcos, said that “Running, in general, is a community sport and lifetime activity that de-emphasizes social communication and emphasizes repetitive behavior. That lends itself well to alignment with the characteristics of autism.”

Tommy Des Brisay of Ontario also has autism, and began running when he turned 14. He now has dreams of making the 2020 Paralympic Team.

According to runnersworld.com, “Within two years (of beginning road racing), he (Tommy) was near the front of the pack. The first time he won a race, he was confused about where everyone else was, so he went back up the course to run with each subsequent finisher and cheer for them as they crossed the line.”

Des Brisay, now 25, has personal bests of 15:17 for 5K, 1:10:34 for the half marathon, and 2:38:50 in the marathon. It’s not unusual for him to go blowing by his competition while reciting lines or singing songs from his favorite movies.

But when people marvel at what Tommy Des Brisay has been able to accomplish in spite of his autism, his mother prefers to ask, “What if it’s because of his autism that he’s this successful?”

“You can choose to look at autism as a disability or you can choose to look at it as a collection of abilities that can be celebrated,” she said. “There’s no doubt that for Tommy, part of his success as a runner has been his unfailing willingness or joy in training all the time. He’s the kind of guy that doesn’t see it as a tedium of any kind to go forward and do the same workout. There’s a comfort for him in that. So I think for Tommy, his autistic tendencies are an advantage in a lot of things. One of those is his running.”

Which leads us back to Hanover-Horton Elementary. When I asked Colin what his favorite thing about Mileage Club® was, he didn’t mention the many tokens he’s earned, the Mileage Club ®t-shirt he won, or the applause from his classmates. He simply answered, “Running.”