Eighty-degree February days aren’t good for building snowmen, but Friday provided perfect weather for the Alice Carlson Applied Learning Center Walkathon.
Cheers erupted from supportive classmates lining the sidewalks as students completed running the loop around the TCU campus. The Walkathon, held at 1:30 p.m., turned into a run for excited elementary school children as parents and teachers brought up the rear.
Principal Jeannie Robinson said the Walkathon, which coincides with the fitness goals of Fort Worth ISD, targeted every student.
“Every child and every staff member got to participate, and parents could join, too,” Robinson said. “It really showed the fabric of our learning community.”
One class measured the course in meters to complement their curriculum. A student finished the course excitedly with the official measurement of 2005 meters.
Nearby, parent Plez Transou celebrated finishing the walkathon with his son and daughter.
“The kids were very excited, first off for healthy reasons and second, to raise money for their school, Transou said.
Transou said his family enjoys participating in Alice Carlson events whenever possible. As a TCU graduate, he said he loves the school’s connection to TCU. Transou’s son said that he attends school at TCU instead of Alice Carlson.
“We believe in the public school system,” Transou said. “We do everything to support them and we love the affiliation with TCU.”
Excitement moved indoors at 5 p.m. for the 19th annual Intercultural Festival. Though the event focused on Texas cultures, classrooms like Randi Higgins’s kindergarten room presented a variety of exhibits,
“The kids have been studying possums for about a month and they decided they wanted to share all the information with everybody that they had learned,” Higgins said.
Upon entering Ms. Higgins’s classroom, participants were asked to walk “like a possum” to a table of cups and use newfound possum-sniffing skills to determine what each cup contained.
“About two weeks ago, the kids got into committees,” Higgins said. “The kids have been working in their committees every day to prepare for tonight. “
Down the hall, a room about Texas trails interested Glenda Gardner and her granddaughter Rose. As Rose, a participant in the festival, used a giant scale to determine the distance to Europe, Gardner shared her fondness for migration.
“I’ve done all our history research,” Gardner said. “Rose knows I’m interested in that.”
Gardner said that her favorite part of the festival was the migration map in the hallway. Students asked passerby to attach a string from their families’ homelands to a map of Texas.
Principal Robinson said she received an overall positive response to the festival this year.
“The third graders did a song and they got an encore,” said Robinson. “One student said she just loves this school and wishes she could go here through high school.”
