We visited the Jacob August Riis school. It is a school involved with Asphalt Green’s program to get kids active. A few years ago, Asphalt Green sent out information to schools in New York City about their program. What the program does is it sends coaches to schools to teach kindergarten through sixth grade. The coaches teach games and sports to kids because they don’t get enough recess and P.E. time, so they try to make as much out of the time that the kids have. When they sent it, 120 schools applied for the program. But Asphalt doesn’t have enough coaches to be able to help all those schools. They could only accept 60 schools out of 120. That shows how much these kids need physical activity. When we went to the Jacob August Riis school, one of the coaches there was Thomas Bickerton. He explained to us that so many kids are in need of sports, and he does his best to help as many people as he can. He loves to help people in general. Our group felt really inspired by this. When we saw those kids laughing and smiling while running around, it really made us see what sports do for people. It brings people together. For our teach-in, I want to make sure that the people we are teaching can understand how kids need sports, and hopefully they can be inspired too.
