The Fitbit fad created an environment where counting your steps and competing against our colleagues was a fun way to increase our active minutes and reach our step targets.
But since it is now the norm for most people to wear some form of smart watch that tracks their movement, the ‘challenge’ element has lost its edge.
So as a school leader, or a member of staff who understands the importance of living an active and balanced life, how are you promoting and encouraging your staff to live active, balanced and healthy lifestyles?
One way is to promote active challenges amongst your staff that will also help your pupils to not only be more active, but see being active as a positive and regular part of life.
“Turn your staff into ‘active’ role models”
My first experience of creating an active challenge for staff came in the form of a staff charity 5k. The event had a 9 week build up that allowed for some members to take part in the Couch to 5k programme, making the event itself their graduation.
The event took place in the local park straight after school, lots of children and their families came to support, the staff not joining in helped marshal and cheer those running as well as count their laps. (6.5 laps of the park in the dark made keeping track of laps completed harder than anticipated)
After the event everyone went back up to school to warm up, receive medals and goody bags and talk about how they actually enjoyed it more than they thought they would. .
The event was simple, it didn’t take much planning and it cost virtually nothing to run. We raised well over £3,000 through a non-uniform day and staff collecting their own individual sponsorship. (For a lot of the staff this was their first time doing anything like this)
The comradery between staff both during and after the event was unique. Jokes and I’m sure some tears were shared during the event, completing a challenge together helps to build a bond much like no other that can only be a good thing when encouraging collaboration between your staff.
This first staff event led to being involved in many more, each time getting progressively more challenging and involving more of the community. The aim of every challenge I work on now is to involve as many people as possible:
- The Challengers: Taking on the main challenge
- The Pupils: Taking on their own physical challenge at school on the same day
- The Community: Having some level of involvement, either directly during the event or indirectly through fundraising and sponsorship opportunities.
- The Staff: Creating a smaller challenge for those not in the main event to be a part of.
Over the next few weeks I will be detailing the ins and outs of organising your own staff challenge.
- Where and how to start
- What the benefits will be to your community
- How you will increase staff morale
- Creating an active atmosphere in your school amongst pupils and staff
- And much more
School leaders if you think you are in a position to look at running your own active staff challenge either on foot, bike, in the pool or however else you like, at your school and would like to speak further on the subject please feel free to get in touch at any of the icons below.
My prices, for now, are FREE.
Daniel Chaplen
Teachers Run Club
teachersrunclub.com 