Author: Cindy Ferek

Turner Ashby High School Dream Trail

The end of 2014 was the beginning of an incredible professional journey for me. It launched the building of a dream that had been brewing inside of me since the day I walked into my first teaching assignment during the summer of 1997 at Turner Ashby High School in Bridgewater, Virginia.

Farmers Insurance offered the Dream Big Teacher Challenge open to applications from any K-12 public education teacher in the country. Our school’s proposal was selected as one of 15 finalists in the country and 1 of 3 schools selected in the Eastern Zone. The voting competition lasted for 2 months and on December 8, 2015, Turner Ashby High School was announced as the Eastern Zone winner of the $100,000 grant! The planning and building of our paved fitness started moving forward. This yearlong journey is documented and can be viewed at www.cindyferek.weebly.com

In 2013, the CDC reported that, “2,163 teens in the United States ages 16-19 were killed and 243,243 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor vehicle crashes. That means that six teens ages 16-19 died every day from motor vehicle injuries.” The pain of those numbers unfortunately had become a reality at our school. We had lost 4 teenagers at the high school in the last 4 years and many more in our school district.

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What would YOU create with a $100,000 Investment in your Physical Education Program?

During the spring of 2014, an email announcement arrived in my inbox. When I saw the Farmers Insurance $100,000 Dream Big Teacher Challenge I knew immediately what I’d want to accomplish if I could win the grant. For 17 years, the desire to build a paved fitness trail has been brewing inside of me. Today, it’s a reality.

When I started teaching in 1997, Rockingham County did not have a single bike lane or biking trail in the city limits and only a couple of trails for pedestrians in several parks. Many people in our community are scared to ride bikes on the public roads. Sadly, in 2000 we even lost one of our Turner Ashby High School teaching colleagues when a driver ran off the right side of the road and hit him.

As a physical educator I want to educate my students in as many ways as possible and creating safe places for them to be physically active has been a long-term goal of mine. I had a vision of starting a biking program at our high school, building a trail, adding a cycling curriculum to the four high schools in our division, and changing the entire culture of our community toward physical activity. I started with only a dream and vision but believed that eventually, with a lot of hard work and determination we could succeed.

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