Heritage Middle School promoting healthy lifestyles

LANSING | Heritage Middle School staff members are planning a spring event that will get Sunnybrook Elementary District 171 students, educators and families on their feet and moving together for a common cause.

The School Board recently approved a proposed seventh-grade project aimed at incorporating various academic subjects into a planned outdoor, fundraising walk/run.

Heritage Principal Bruce Christensen said plans are still being formulated but they include what is hoped to become an annual walk/run that coincides with the new healthy lifestyle program initiated and getting under way this year by Assistant Principal Michael Keelan.

Keelan, who is set to become Heritage principal after Christensen retires at the end of the school year, planned to introduce the healthy lifestyle program to parents, students and community members at a school meeting in late January.

The proposed walk/run is to include District 171 students from Heritage and Nathan Hale schools, staff and families, and will take place on a Saturday, possibly in mid-May, on the open field behind the Lansing middle school, seventh-grade reading teacher Kim Clementi told The Times.

Clementi came up with the idea for the seventh-grade project as a way to engage teachers and students in a learning activity.

When students are active in the planning of an event, she said, they are more likely to get involved and will reap greater benefits.

She said students will learn math and science by planning the walk/run route and discovering the health benefits of such physical activity. They will gain social studies knowledge by exploring various races held across the country and the terrain of those events. Students will use reading and language arts skills as they research different charities and write letters to potential sponsors.

The proposed event will cover one to two miles this first year but eventually could be expanded in scope and size, Clementi said.

The fundraising element will be used to help defray some of the associated costs, such as perhaps providing trophies to the top winners, and to support a charity of the students' choosing. Participants will be expected to pay an entry fee.

In other matters, the board:

• Approved the hiring of Jill Trembczynski as a special education teacher at Nathan Hale School for the remainder of the school year.

• Approved a retirement request, effective at the end of the 2015-16 school year, for speech therapist Marcia Fotopoulos.

• Recognized District 171 employees for their years of exemplary service: Ken Bobos and Christy Cheek for 35 years; Lilian Mercer for 30 years; Sylvia Gholston, Sharon Murphy and Kimberly Wallace for 20 years; Michelle Dulla, Sharon Everett, LaNissa Spear Jones, Linda Kooy, Carol Linville, Betty Mayerak, Judith Trask, Jami Parise and Denise Weir for 10 years of service.