Students walk around the world

Students in Tim Balvanz?s class don?t mind walking. In fact, they have walked more this year than any year in Balvanz?s career. Balvanz kept track of how many miles his students walked throughout the year, and realized last week that they were approaching a milestone.

The 426-member student body had collectively walked almost 20,000 miles. Balvanz saw that if the students kept up their pace, they would walk all the way around the world, 24,901 miles, by mid-May. On Friday morning, the students achieved that feat when every fourth, fifth and sixth grader in the building walked a lap around the ball field.

Balvanz didn?t tell the kids how many miles they walked until he was certain they would reach the goal he set forth. He said it was twice as far as the students walked last year.

?I?ll get to fill in the last half-inch of our journey on the map, which equals about 600 miles,? he said.

Now that the students have walked around the world, Balvanz isn?t sure how to top that goal.

?Maybe we could walk around other planets,? he said.

?I?ve always had a walk-run unit where we keep track of our mileage,? he said. ?Kids need exercise daily. They need 60 minutes or more of exercise a day.?

Two years ago, Balvanz encouraged his fellow teachers to take their classes on 10-minute walks on those days they don?t have physical education (P.E.). The teachers loved the idea, and ever since then a class at Lincoln can be always be seen circling the block.

Balvanz has typically incorporated geography and other subjects into his walk/run unit. In election years, he has the students walk from Washington, Iowa, to all the other cities named ?Washington? in the country. Their last stop is Washington, D.C. They arrive there just in time to vote on Election Day.

He has also had them walk on Lincoln Highway, which runs from San Francisco through his hometown of Cedar Rapids.

One of the improvements to Lincoln that has made walking easier is the addition of a sidewalk around the northern and eastern edges of the block, which occurred in the summer of 2011. The addition of that sidewalk creates a track about one-third of a mile long, which is where the students logged most of their miles this year.

Not all the kids are content to walk laps. Some of them prefer to run. One student in particular, sixth-grader Zeb Roos, has run 197 miles this school year and plans to break 200 before summer break. Zeb is the son of David and Pamela Roos.