I gave my camera to Brian, one of the parents who comes to our bike club meetings. Therefore you are about to see more of me in a blog post than ever before. Below, at the far left, is Cindy who works at Auburn Elementary and is the grandmother of one of the club members. It’s great to have TWO involved parents to support our club.
As we got ready to go the playground for blacktop drills,
Brian took a picture for another Bicycle Garden planting.
Club members are working through a series of skills which must be mastered before we can even consider going for a street ride: starting in power pedal, controlled stop using both brakes, hand signals, lane positioning.
Today, we moved on to scanning over the left shoulder and deciding if it was safe to leave the right lane position to avoid a hazard.
Tag Archives: LCI 3879
Press release and interview
With support from WALKSacramento, I sent out a press release about the success of the Leroy F Greene Academy Bike Club’s initiation of a $15,000 bike trail improvement. Unexpectedly, within 10 minutes of sending out the email, I was contacted by Jouron Bourque of iHeartMedia in Sacramento. Today, I drove to their local station headquarters to record an interview. 
Fun! The segment was aired between 5-7 am on Sunday December 14.
Auburn Elementary Bike Club
What a great group of kids. Four girls today and quite eager to learn the parts of a bicycle, especially since it was raining and we couldn’t go outside.
Students used address labels to write the names of the parts and stuck them to one side of the bike.
This is the beginning of a photo project.
Meanwhile Mr Brownell had to deal with a small flood in the workroom for 3 classrooms.
Auburn Elementary Bike Club
There was some misty rain, but I set up a simple course anyway to practice riding in hazardous conditions and using the stop and right turn hand signals. It had been a minimum day with parent conferences – a challenge for good attendance. Hurray for the four girls who showed up! There were only two bicycles and were generously shared.
Lindsey zooms by.
Mr Brownell is the staff advisor.
(Honestly I needed to go to work this afternoon, the past two weeks have been difficult. Coaching this bicycle club is so rewarding, such a happy place with eager learners. After the club meeting, I went to my friend Maria’s and that’s when I got the phone call, Mom had passed away. Her suffering was over.)
Project Ride Smart
For three weeks, I’ve been teaching bicycle skills to 5 graders at H Allen Hight School. My teaching partner was Doug (below in red shirt).
Rechalking lines AFTER a small rainstorm. Darnit: back-breaking work.
There are 45 bicycles in the fleet in four different sizes. Each day, we roll them all out.
At the end of the day, they had to be packed tightly into a small storage location – Doug was great at this.
Blacktop drills:
Mr West’s class. There were two after-school coaching sessions and about 10 kids either learned to ride a bike or relearned basic riding skills.
A letter from Udham:
Dear North Natomas TMA Staff, Thanks for teaching me how to ride a bike. Mr Meyers, you’re a very good teacher. I also want to thank Mr Doug. You motivated me to not give up. When I got hurt, I kept going thanks to you. Now I want to thank Ms Arlete for not giving up on me. I was one of the worst riders, now I’m one of the best in my group. You had confidence in me.
The third week, if students had good basic riding skills, we left campus for a ride in the community in groups of 8 students plus one LCI and one more person, usually a parent, teacher or community volunteer. L-R: Pollyanna, Doug, Brad, Mellissa.
Auburn Elementary Bike Club
A couple of weeks ago, no one showed up, but today – Hurray! – there were 11 mostly 4th and 5th graders present.
I shared many ways this bicycle club could develop and tried to find out what the students were interested in. Teacher Luke Brownell is the staff advisor and Miha Tomuta of WALKSacramento is the administrator of the program that funds my LCI coaching position.
Project Ride Smart
Oh my goodness, it’s been HOT! Nevertheless, we persevere with our last day of street rides. Teaching at Regency Park has been so wonderful. The school climate, fifth grade teaching staff, working with Elle = “I love my job!”
And I got another surprise from a former student. Heather Long from Westside School, is now a parent at Regency Park. She married another former student Nathan Anderson.
Project Ride Smart
If there’s a bicycle education program to emulate in the Sacramento region, it’s Project Ride Smart for 5th graders in the North Natomas Transportation Management District. For those of you familiar with Rio Linda, this area is just west of the E Levee Road, sort of the backyard of where I grew up on W 6th St, now it’s all subdivision housing, but they do have some very cool things happening. Regency Park School is part of NNTMA and the only school in Twin Rivers USD to benefit from this excellent program. It was developed and promoted by Mellissa Meng about 5 years ago. Here, she stepped in on Day 1 to introduce the course. Every 5th grader had the opportunity to participate. Bicycles were provided. There was about 3 hours of classroom instruction, 3 hours of blacktop drills, 3 hours of on-street riding, and 1-hour follow-up/debriefing. This is an intense course and one reason why blogging gaps happen to me. 
L-R: Matthew and Elle. Elle is my co-LCI lead teaching partner this time. This is her website http://www.tinyhelmetsbigbikes.com/ 
Matthew is working toward achieving his LCI status by practice teaching with us. Matthew’s story is incredible. He was struck from behind in 2011 while riding his bike on Elkhorn Blvd. He generously shares his story to encourage everyone to wear a helmet. His brain injury left him without emotions and without the sense of taste.
LGA Bike Club final meeting
As the school year neared its end, we met for a final time and instead of conducting any business, we hopped on our bikes and rode the shortest distance to Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream.
L-R: LaTraye (eating TWO triple-scoops in waffle cones!), Julian, Adam, Jack.
The “sword” Jack is wielding is actually a skateboard and LaTraye’s ice cream is almost gone. Youthful ice cream appetite!
Coaching the LGA Bike Club was so much fun this year. I can’t wait to do it again next year. WALKSacramento is looking for ways to expand bicycle education into middle and high schools. I think our club is the only one of its kind in the region and was deemed a huge success this year. Working for and with Monika and Miha at WALKSacramento has been a dream, they were supportive and encouraging and gave me a lot of creative freedom. Megan McManus, the club advisor, was equally supportive and encouraging and I compliment her on all the volunteer hours she put in to host every club meeting and to go on every Saturday ride.
SRTS in SJUSD
Dan Allison runs the Safe Routes to School program in San Juan Unified School District.
In this program, pedestrian safety is taught at grades 1-3, bicycle safety at grades 4-6.
I worked with Doug, an LCI friend, on this day. On other days, I taught pedestrian safety with Dan or Elle.
I worked 5 days either at Greer School or Whitney School. One day, a teacher came up to me to see if I remembered her. Yes! Sheena Guy Smith from Westside and Westside Charter School. Now a second grade teacher at Whitney.
arletelouise 