Walk to school day- a classic school tradition in the AWRSD district. Many students look forward to being paired with a young student from Briggs Elementary and taking it upon themselves to walk them to school, while many younger students enjoy hanging out with a high schooler and being taken to school. But many people who participate in a walk to school day wonder about the history behind it.

According to Gulfcoastmedia.com, Reporter Ruth Mayo, “Walk to School Day started in 1997 with the goal of ‘building awareness for the need for walkable communities,’ especially emphasizing safe routes to and from schools.”

Although it was made to create awareness for these important topics, merging the two schools was also a bonding experience. 

Briggs’ 5th-grade teacher Mr. Cucchiara, offers a new outlook on walk-to-school day,  “Walk-to-school day was perfect- a little chaos thrown into the monotony of today’s school life. It is great to see students from years ago, nearly fully grown mingling with today’s students. Young and old, we’re all trying to make connections and bring a little joy into each other’s lives.”

Second-grade student Luca, similar to many other young participants in Walk to School Day had a very positive opinion of it, “I loved walk to School Day and hanging out with the big kids.”

From a high school student’s perspective, juniors Brian Sandjong and Eli Christ said, “We enjoyed being good influences on the younger generation.”

Walk to School Day is many of the AWRSD students’ favorite school activity. It provides an incredible bonding experience for everyone apart of it and has an incredible meaning beyond it. Hopefully, this tradition carries on throughout the years and the elementary kids we walked, will one day walk the new Briggs students.