The Walking Classroom Institute

The mission of The Walking Classroom is to help strengthen the physical, mental, and academic health of children by establishing and maintaining healthy lifestyle habits while building their health literacy and core content knowledge. Students go for a walk listening to standards-aligned educational podcasts that come preloaded on a WalkKit audio device, or via our new mobile app. Students Walk. Listen. And Learn.

Our goal is to distribute our program as widely as possible to educators in schools and in before and after school settings. Educators can go to our website and apply for a donated class set of materials. We try to donate to as many teachers as possible from our waiting list, prioritizing public schools where poverty is high and academic achievement is often low. Additionally, we want to make sure that teachers and after school facilitators are well prepared to implement our program, so we provide free online training and many supplemental resources that relate to each podcast.

Another important goal for us is to sustain our organization via sales of our program materials. Program sales generate unrestricted funds for us that can be used to pay salaries, cover operating expenses and make it possible for us to donate materials to more schools.

Teachers and educators can apply for donated sets of Walking Classroom materials. Through grants and product sales, approximately 75% of Walking Classroom materials in use have been donated at no charge to the schools. Of the 780 full class sets of materials of materials donated from 2015 through 2020, about 60% went to public schools where 60% to 100% of the kids were receiving free and reduced lunch—schools where many students are struggling academically. We also recommend that teachers share Walking Classroom materials with other classes to maximize the number of students impacted.

Importantly, use of The Walking Classroom program is growing materially in out-of-school time settings. This is especially important in 2021 as after school and summertime learning programs will be an important setting for learning recovery after a year of virtual school for many students. We provide free online training for all OST facilitators. That training, combined with the companion Teacher's Guide, makes it very easy for OST staff to use the program.

We regularly apply for corporate grants and solicit individual donations to help supplement the number of classroom sets we can donate. We have also achieved out goal of growing product sales to a predictable level each year with the net margin covering most personnel and operating costs. The more products we sell, the more products we can donate.

As of the end of 2020, The Walking Classroom had distributed WalkKit audio devices to educators in all fifty states with approximately 75,000 students benefiting from the use of the program each year. Many of those students are now getting much-needed fresh air and exercise, have increased their health literacy, have improved their grades and standardized test scores, and have a new appreciation for exercise as well as learning.

While we are thrilled with our progress over the past 10 years, there are still millions of students sitting at their desks all day and struggling academically. Our goal is to donated as many WalkKits as possible with the funding and staffing we have available.