The students from Gateway Elementary, Gateway Middle, and Gateway Michael schools were very clear about their healthy expectations for the new Carr Square Walking Trail behind their schools that was opened on Wednesday, September 26.
“It gives me a safe place to walk.”
“It gives me a chance to be outside with nature while I walk. Walking brings me peace.”
“Walking is good for my heart. Walking makes my heart strong and increases blood flow.”
“It gives me a place to exercise. Also, by walking the sun gives me Vitamin D.”
“Walking makes my lung stronger and helps me breathe.”
These insights – written on signs, prompted by teachers – show that the health benefits of the new concrete walking trail are evident to the students who will be walking on it.
They will be doing more than walk on it. “It is important to me because I like to run with my friends on the trail,” one student wrote on a sign.
And many students will be riding on the trail. It was designed by Civil Design Inc. and built by B & P Construction – both companies donated their materials and labor – to be wheelchair-accessible. Indeed, students in wheelchairs led the first lap around the trail when it was opened.
Some of those students lack language skills. The signs they made about the trail were drawn, rather than written. Their drawings, full of color and energy, reflected their own insightful feelings about this new opportunity to go outside and get moving.
The trail – funded by the Missouri Foundation for Health and organized by BJC HealthCare as part of their Healthy Schools Healthy Communities partnership – offers an expansive view of Downtown, a ball field, the schools’ garden, the three schools themselves, and a neighboring charter school, KIPP Inspire Academy.
By design, the trail connects with Jefferson Avenue and the surrounding communities, and it’s named for the neighboring community to the north.
“We want the community to use the trail, too,” said Roger CayCe, deputy superintendent of Operations for Saint Louis Public Schools.
The first lap around the one-mile trail was introduced by Erica Oliver of BJC School Outreach and Youth Development. “Let’s walk, run, jog, roll, dance,” she said, and the students did all of those things.
They walked with arms slung around a friend’s shoulder, or elbows locked, sometimes in a wide chain of locked elbows that spanned the width of the trail. One classroom of students pumped fists and chanted, in unison, “Power!”
A. Michael Shaw, principal of Gateway Middle School, finished the lap towards the end of the pack. As he passed the school garden near trail’s end – and the trail has an offshoot that loops around the garden – he was thinking of ways to use the trail for education, in addition to exercise.
“I’ll have my P.E. teacher integrate it into his classes,” Shaw said. “I’ll use it for our Rumination Periods. That’s when I ask the students to think deep about life and what they want to do in the future. We will do some Rumination Walks. Walk and look at life and try to get a little clarity.”
