Shaping America's Future^®

"I grew up in a small town called Dresden in northwest Tennessee. When I was in the fourth grade, the P.E. instructor in my elementary school decided that we would do a program that she called 'Jog Across America.' Every time that we had a P.E. session, we would walk, jog, or run as we chose around the gym. For each lap around the gym we would receive a cad showing that we had made another lap, and for every five miles that we traveled we were awarded a toe token. At the end of the program, the cumulative distance traveled across America by the students was 2,000 miles. The encouragement and reward associated with such healthy practice was all I needed at that age to be happy, and that isn't to mention the fun my fellow students and I had competing.

As of the present, I am attending the University of Memphis as a Marketing Management Major, and to this day I have the tokens I earned walking and running. I cannot rightly say what made me recall this memory so long after it happened. The only reasonable conclusion I have is that the fun I had participating in this program as a child meant more to me at the time than I even realized. I have even thought about possibly using this to start a non-profit fundraiser of some sort. Over all, this is a marvelous program for children to participate in. From personal experience, I can say that the toe tokens make an excellent reward. They are small, brightly colored and shaped like a funny little foot, so what's not for a kids to like? (I had six toe tokens myself: white, black, dark green, neon green, silver and glow-in-the-dark.)"

University Student, Tennessee