Stepping and democracy

The students are doing a health and fitness challenge through the PE department. During their PE class each student wears a pedometer and tracks how much they moved/walked/ran during the class. Their goal each day is increased but it's around 4000 steps. To help the students the staff are also recording steps throughout the school day for two week periods. The first two week period I averaged 10200 steps per day. Now here's the challenge, increase the steps/activity by 10 % for the next two weeks.

What?! That means I'm trying to find an additional 1020 steps each day! I need a little rat wheel, a treadmill, anything. I am creating jobs to do in the work room and going up and down the stairs three or four times each morning before school starts. A lap around the building is just over a quarter mile. Walked 4 laps one morning and then four more after my day ended. Those extra steps are hard to find...mostly I guess due to efficiency. I mean, really aren't we supposed to conserve energy? I was about 1000 steps in the red for the new goal after three days. On the bright side overall, I have increased my stepping output.

My social studies group are studying Ancient Greece. About half of them met the quotation challenge: "Ours is a democracy because power is in the hands not of the minority, but of all the people." (Pericles, 431BC) The class has chosen topics for research to create the "Greek Times" newspaper pages for class. 8th graders are writing a comparative essay on their home culture and the United States and the 7th graders are working on descriptive adjectives and looking for Cause and Effect reasoning.

less stress this week, have caught a cold and am taking a PRAXIS test tomorrow.