The trick to getting kids moving? Tiny plastic junk

By ANDREW MCGINN

a.mcginn@beeherald.com

It remains nothing short of amazing what an elementary student will do for an imported trinket.

Sean Thompson, the PE teacher at Greene County Elementary School, introduced something called the Mileage Club to the school in the fall. The concept is simple enough — students in grades 2-4 are asked to bypass all of that enticing playground equipment and instead spend their precious recess time walking or running laps.

Yeah.

Ridiculous, right?

Enter the Toe Token, little plastic feet — collect all 74 colors! — that can adorn shoelaces.

And?

Third-grader Alaina Gettler, for one, is now well on her way to achieving the holy grail of Toe Tokens — it glows in the dark! — which Thompson will award to students who walk 100 miles.

Yes.

One hundred miles; just 30 short of downtown Omaha from here.

“I stick with it because I like getting these,” Alaina, 9, explained recently, looking down at her fluorescent Nikes, already tricked out with a half-dozen or so equally colorful Toe Tokens.

Oh, go ahead and laugh, but you know you would have washed buses at the bus barn in third grade if there was a weepul to be had. (Remember those little fluffy things with the googly eyes and sticky feet?)

“They think I’m crazy,” Alaina said of her parents.

The point, according to Thompson, is to cement a lifelong love of fitness among kids.

“I just see kids sitting around too much,” said Thompson, who’s now in his 27th year of teaching, but in his first at the elementary school following the retirement of Lori Danner.

Alaina has walked nearly 40 miles since the beginning of the school year, earning a new Toe Token at five-mile increments.

Mileage is tracked by Fitness Finders, the company whose Mileage Club is in use at thousands of schools across the country. In addition to the colorful Toe Tokens, the company’s incentives include metal dog tags.

After each lap, students scan the QR code on a bracelet they wear.

Thompson’s goal is to get them moving, then keep them moving.

“Hopefully,” he said, “it will carry over to when they get older.”

Admittedly, there’s a part of Thompson that can’t believe how many students are taking part. Students only get two recesses per day: a 20-minute one in the morning and a measly, 15-minute one in the afternoon.

“She’s almost to Ames,” he said of Alaina, his top walker/runner.

To sweeten the deal, Thompson even created the Golden Shoe Award, a “trophy” that travels among the classrooms with the most miles in a given week.

The Golden Shoe Award is nothing more than one of Thompson’s old sneakers, spray-painted gold and stuck to a board.

While winter has slowed the students’ progress some, look for the spring thaw to reawaken that inner drive for an elusive, glow-in-the-dark Toe Token.

And, with their eyes on the prize, something else is happening on the elementary playground, according to Thompson.

“I have heard it’s cut down on some behavior things,” he said. “It’s giving kids another option.”