Turkey Trot Game Plan

Gobble, gobble friends!

Today I share a clear, low-stress plan for running a school-wide turkey trot with fairness, safety, and fun at the center. Let's have fun!

• six-day rotation compressed into a one-day event
• track layout and grade-level scheduling
• dynamic warm-up and pacing reminders
• splitting runners to reduce congestion
• index cards and stamps for accurate lap counts
• midpoint cutoff to ensure a fair finish
• medals as recognition without pressure
• roles for PTO, specialists, and parent volunteers
• popsicle station and supervised free time
• framing the day as movement celebration

Please be patient on the podcast, on the writing, and I will get caught back up hopefully soon!

Take care,

Dave

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Schedule Update
• 0:58 Life Load, Coaching, And Surgery News
• 3:23 What A Turkey Trot Is
• 4:22 Schoolwide Setup And Logistics
• 6:45 Warm-Up, Weather, And Expectations
• 8:37 Flow Of The Event And Timing
• 10:11 Stamps Over Sticks To Curb Cheating
• 12:28 Fair Finish Rules And Switching Groups
• 14:07 Managing Volume And Safety On Track

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Super Stars podcast. My name is Dave, and today let's talk turkey P Nation. Yes, the turkey trot. And I'm gonna explain how I run it. And I've done it a few times and just some in some different ways, different forms. So without further ado, here we go. All right, B Nation, welcome in. As always, I appreciate you listening into me on a hopefully weekly or even more basis. So speaking of weekly basis, I want to put out something just quickly, uh just as an update. I actually put this out if you follow me on Medium or my Substack. I actually put it out on my Substack for my email list. The uh next couple weeks, I'm I'm kind of behind in my writing and my podcasting. And I'm trying to get caught back up, and I will get caught back up, hopefully during Thanksgiving break and Christmas break. I'd like to be ahead by well, by a lot. I like to be ahead of my articles and my podcasts by a lot. And so a lot of times when you hear me, it's like, you know, I've a couple of weeks ahead, or well, I guess you'd be a couple weeks behind. But or even my writing, same thing. And lately I've just been super busy. I just I'm just being honest with you. I've my my kids are playing a lot of sports. My son just got done with actually tackle football with for his uh high school. And my daughter uh just got done with flag football, but she's still doing uh volleyball for her uh school and club volleyball, and it's like every night. Um and usually that's been okay, but I took a coaching job on the weekends um with i9 sports, if anybody's ever heard of that, just coaching and and roughing and things like that. And that's in the mornings. Um I did it because hey, Christmas coming up, gotta look at a little extra money, and that's usually my writing time in the mornings, so I just hard to get caught up, is what I'm saying. And I'm actually having surgery this Friday. Um I just uh, you know, it's been a long road for I guess I could tell you. Hey, I haven't told many people, but all of a sudden lately I've been telling everybody that I'm having surgery Friday, so I might as well just tell you this. Um, I have had a hernia in my pelvic area. I just uh just being honest here. I can't believe I'm telling everybody this. And it's been hurting since right before the summer started. It's uh they couldn't find it originally. I went to the emergency room, they didn't find anything. And all summer long I was pretty much fine. And then I went back to school and started teaching, and it's been painful. It just comes and goes. And uh, long story short, I'm having surgery on Friday, which is a good thing to get rid of that, hopefully. And uh it's just been a long road of just stuff like that, basically, is what I'm trying to say. And I'm I've fallen behind. So I apologize if you're uh an avid listener, which I appreciate those of you who are, and or if you just listen, you know, started tuning in. I appreciate that as well. I appreciate all of you. But uh I might if I fall behind is what I'm saying, uh, please be patient on the podcast, on the writing, and I will get caught back up um hopefully soon. So let's let's move on to the turkey trot, shall we? As my dog is barking. All right, so the turkey trot. Now, obviously, if you live in another country, you probably do not uh do a turkey trot. Maybe do something like this, I'm not sure. For us in the United States, with Thanksgiving coming up, a lot of PE teachers do what's called a turkey trot. And it is kind of like what what it's called, I guess. It's uh it's not really anything we do with turkeys, but it's trotting or doing laps around. In this case, we do laps around our track. So the way we do this, it depends on the year. I guess I'll tell you what we do. We're doing this year. Last year we did it in two days. This year we're doing it in one day. It is a all kids out there at the same time as far as grade levels during their specials time. It's considered a day zero that we have a six-day rotation. It's considered a day zero because art, music, and STEM are all coming to PE. And we're gonna all have them run on the track. Our track is about a fifth of a mile. So that means obviously one, you know, every lap, every five laps is a mile. And I just met with our PTO and our administration the uh last week just to go over the final details of how I want it run and how they, you know, what their expectations are for the parents and uh, you know, as far as volunteers and as far as even the specialist area teachers that are coming out, just how we're gonna run this thing. And I know everybody's different, so everybody's got different situations, different programs, different number of kids, different number of uh adult helpers, things like that. So this might not be a one-size-fits-all thing, but I just want to explain to you how we run it and maybe you can get some ideas from that. And if you have any other ideas or other things you do, I'd love to hear it as well. So definitely hit me up in my uh in the show notes in my email, things like that. So love to hear from you. So let's go over the basics. Now, the students will all come out again at the same time, like I said. Let's go with uh, I guess our first class is first grade. They will all come out, and I don't have room for eight classes. Yes, there's eight classes, even though it's a six-day rotation. Some classes are split. So eight class classes will come out, and I don't have that much room under our pavilion. So my plan is to put students on the dots, and then the extra students kind of in between the rows, and just have them sit for a moment and I'll go over all the rules, everything we're doing, which just say a couple minutes. From there, we'll do probably a brief warm-up, um, a real quick stretch and just kind of like uh dynamic warm-up where we're, you know, doing some jumper jacks, things like that, just to get warmed up. It will be a little chilly in the morning, not bad at all, kind of in the high 60s, low 70s. And for you know, for the older kids later on, it's gonna go up to about 83, 84 from what it looks like. So pretty good weather. And I'll explain to them from there the rules of what we're gonna do. Actually, I've been talking to them uh every class period. Like today, I just I just I found out Friday what we're doing. So Friday all day I was telling the kids, and I see the children every other day, the classes every other day. So it's kind of like even in odd days. Uh today was um, I think an odd day. So I saw the even group on Friday and I told them the expectations and the rules and stuff. And I'm gonna keep reminding them because I reminded my group today, and then the next two days I'm reminding them as well, just to kind of keep, just keep it going, make sure they understand what's what's gonna happen. So at the last moment, so what we're gonna do originally is stagger the students, um, kind of the kids that really want to go for it, get a bunch of laps, and then the kids that just kind of want to walk and talk with their friends, kind of go in the back, just like a regular you know, race or marathon or whatever. Um, you know, just because we don't do like qualifying and things like that, but we know the kids that really want to try and really want to go for it, and the kids are just kind of gonna be like, okay, I just want to go for a nice little leisurely walk here and jog a little bit here and there. And and that was really the plan, even as I was talking to PTO and my administration originally. Okay, we're gonna do this and you know, have a lot of kids on the track at a time. I mean, you're talking like 175 kids, maybe a little less, on our track at the same time. And again, I know you you don't you don't know what our track looks like, but it it's just not I mean, it's not that wide. It's wide enough, you know, it's a picture like a car and a half wide, and then you know, a fifth of a mile. So, you know, even when they're spread out, it's still a lot of children on the track. So the original plan was they all run for about 25 minutes. I mean, we have a 50-minute rotation now, classes now. We had 40 minutes for the past well forever, I feel I feel like. So now we have it 50 minutes this year, and they change it. So it's a lot of time. So what I'm thinking of is, or what I'm gonna do again is I'm seated for just a moment, make sure I talk to them, they understand everything. Quick warm-up, and then let's say that's 10 minutes. That should be probably less than that, but between transition time and getting kids just in the pavilion, a lot of students. Um, again, I'm thinking that's 10 minutes. So we have 40 minutes left. All right, so after that, what we'll do is divide the students. We'll just have boys go first. Boys will go on the track and do their laps for about, you know, I'm thinking like 18 minutes for the older kids, maybe 15 for kindergarten first. And they're gonna see how many laps they get. They're gonna go around, they get a just a regular old index card they're gonna get from the teacher, put their name on it, and they get stamps from our PTO every time they go around the track. And the kids with the most at the end, we're gonna uh have them uh call them up and we're saying, okay, who has 10 laps, who has or stickers, who's done this many, who's in this many, and we're gonna give out medals to the top three places. And we could have extra. There could be a bunch of kids that have, I don't know, 12 laps, and only a few that have, you know, 13, 14. Things like that. So we're trying to find a winner. I honestly don't care who wins. Um, yeah, I like to win, I like to do competitions sometimes, but for me, it's just kids getting out, kids getting active. We've been practicing this um as part of our warm-up for the past month, I'd say, just pacing ourselves. And so it's really a celebration. I don't want, I don't want to put a pressure on the kids. Um, it's just one of those things that I feel like I just I'd rather not even do medals and stuff, but um it's fine. We got it. We're doing it. So after that, after the boys do their let's say 18 minutes, and we figure out a winner while that's going on and we'll figure out a winner there. The and I mean let me back up for a second. When the boys are running, the girls are gonna have some free time, and and there's gonna be like a pop school station. So they get free time on our basketball courts, under our pavilion, and they get to just hang out and have fun. And the special areas teachers, the other ones, art, music, and stem, will monitor that with a few other parents. While me and my parents will be out in the field and we're gonna monitor the laps, and we're gonna have PTO, like I said, volunteers stamp them every time they go around the track. Now, in the past, and what we do sometimes when we practice, even today, we use pop school sticks. The kids go around to get a pop school stick. You know, they keep going and get a bunch of pop school sticks. And that's worked for years for me, but not during the turkey trot, because what's been happening, or what happened last year, at least a couple times, is kids had had like, I don't know, two or three laps and weren't really trying. Well, they just give their friends extra sticks. So it's hard to gauge who was really like what they really got. If some kids got extra from their friends, or they dropped them on the track and some kids picked them up. This time it just lessens the uh cheating aspect of it. I hate to say it, but it's it's not everybody. You're talking like five to ten kids in the whole school, um, maybe less. But it just lessens the the that happening, I guess. So instead, like I said, like I mentioned before, index card stamp from the PTO will have about four lines going of just stamping. And uh if they don't make it, we're we're gonna give them a warning, like a one-minute warning or something like that, where they have to get to a certain spot because at some point at the at the end we're gonna blow the whistle, and if they're not to that point, we're gonna send them back. Like it's about the half the halfway marker of a lap. Because it wouldn't be fair if one group just is just finishing a lap and a group is just starting the next lap and they they get that extra kind of you know lap in. That's not gonna be fair. So we're gonna stop them about halfway and say, okay, you guys gotta go back. And the people made it, you finish your lap and you get a stamp. So, you know, like I said, that then they switch. So then the girls will come out and the boys will get free time and a pop school. Um, yes, even at nine o'clock in the morning. It's gonna be great. And uh yeah, I mean, that's the main way we're gonna run it this year. Again, like I said, originally it was gonna be like 150 to 175 kids on the track at a time. That's gonna be, I just think that's problems waiting to happen as far as number of kids. I know some of you don't have as many students as I do, and some of you have more. Like my former school has more students than that. So I actually appreciate the fact that I only have like three and a half that that kind of thing, classes at a time uh per day. But now we're gonna double that, you know, kind of thing. Um, I mean three and a half to four kind of classes a day, depending on the splits of the couple classes. I appreciate that. So, because there's more in my former school. So everybody's in a different situation. I'm but this is the way we're gonna run the turkey trot this year. I know some my principal was talking about maybe uh a pie for the winner, or that'd be pretty cool. But I think we might have multiple winners. Um I'm not positive. I think we're gonna see how it goes. Last year, the kids would really want to try, really separate themselves from the rest of the group. So within the first couple of minutes, you could tell who's gonna really go for it and who's gonna kind of, you know, get a few laps in, get some, you know, talk to the friends, have fun. And that's the basic, you know, premise, like I said, of the turkey trot. I hope you um, if you're gonna do turkey trot, have a great time. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, like if you're in the United States, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. And I will talk to you soon. Uh, probably the next time you hear from me will be after my surgery. So um I'm hoping it goes well. I'm sure it will. And I again just please be patient. If you're waiting for another podcast to drop, it might be a little late next week, but I'll do my best and my writing as well. So take care, P Nation. You guys and girls are awesome. And I appreciate everything. Like I said, check out the show notes, check out everything, and let's keep pushing our profession forward.