Wheels Up! How I Brought Cycling to My School (And How You Can Too)

Helmets on PE Nation!

In this episode we explore how to create a bike program for PE classes. Learning to ride bikes in PE class gives students both essential physical skills and valuable road safety knowledge while creating memorable experiences.

• Started with a one-day professional development course on biking for PE teachers
• District offered a bike trailer program with bikes and scooters for schools
• Created obstacle courses teaching road safety, signals, and proper crossing techniques
• Students learned through both structured activities and free riding time
• Used hairnets under helmets to address hygiene concerns
• When district funding ended, began planning a DIY approach through donations
• Storage remains the biggest challenge - considering outdoor shed options
• Looking into grants, PTO funding, and police department helmet programs
• Applies to any PE activity: "If you dream it, build it, make it work, make it happen"

Let's ride,

Dave

Link to article with the "Biking Tree" picture!

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Chapters

• 0:11 Welcome to Super Size Phys Ed
• 0:41 Discovering the Bike Program
• 1:36 Running the Bike Course
• 3:31 Solving the Helmet Problem
• 5:47 Program Obstacles and Changes
• 8:19 Building a DIY Bike Trailer
• 10:54 Making Your PE Dreams Happen
• 13:01 Closing Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Super Size Phys Ed podcast. My name is Dave and today I want to talk about biking in PE class, how I did it and how you can do it too. So without further ado, let's go. All right, pe Nation, welcome in. So I need to go back for a moment about I don't know eight or nine years, maybe 10.

Speaker 1: 0:48

And at the time there was a biking course, a one-day course that PE teachers could take in our district. So I did it. It was only me and a few people. The instructor took us around, basically at the education department, had some bikes and showed us the rules of the road, how we fit our helmets, how we go around. We went around a few trails and things like that, and it was really cool.

Speaker 1: 1:21

So the next year it was offered in our pre-service week that we could sign up for a bike trailer to come to our school, and most schools will get it for a week. But the school I was at before had like 11, almost 1,200 students. So I asked if we could have it for two weeks and they allowed it. So that was definitely a plus. So what happened was they would again, I signed up for two weeks. They would drop a trailer off just right in our PE, like our grass area, and we'd have the keys and whatever. They just leave it there. And it was a district grant I think I'm not sure it was either through the state or through the district, but our district had it and we would have our third, fourth and fifth graders ride bikes and we also had a few scooters. There were a few scooters in there as well for students that were a little nervous or had never ridden before or just wanted to ride a scooter once in a while ridden before or just wanted to ride a scooter once in a while and the way we would do it is we would have our um, we'd have an obstacle course set up and these instructors would come out and give us some tips and they would, uh, help us out the obstacle course and then they would, for like one day so we had it for two weeks they come out for one day help us set things up. It was really nice. They would put down these like tennis balls that were cut in half for little, like road bumps and things like that, and draw on chalk arrows and things like that on our on our basketball courts, so students would go through again an obstacle course with stop signs and things like that, where they would signal left, right, they would slow down. They would stop at crosswalks and signal left, right, they would slow down. They would stop at crosswalks and look left, right, left, they'd walk their bike through the crosswalk. They would do all these things on an obstacle course. It was really cool, and when they were done, we'd allow them to go on the bus ramp, which was also our PE track, and they would get to free ride for 10, 15 minutes.

Speaker 1: 3:25

Now there were times when we did it in partners because we might not have enough bikes, or there were some with flat tires. Some of them were not the greatest bikes, I'm not going to lie, but over the years, over the few years we had it, the bikes got better and they took more care of it, I guess, and so the kids would love it. We'd have kids learning how to ride a bike at PE or just free riding and PE. I mean, how great is that? We had a fantastic time riding bikes in PE class and there were times when students would struggle. Not everybody knew how to ride a bike, but what I seen was their friends would help them. Now we can help them as well, but their friends would help them Now we can help them as well.

Speaker 1: 4:08

But we did have other classes going on at the same time. So at my former school it was myself and three paras, so there's four adults, but maybe only two of the adults were doing bikes and the other two were with other groups playing a different game in a different spot. So it wasn't as simple as hey. Everybody's doing bikes. So you're talking about two adults to about, you know, maybe 40 kids. If we have two classes doing it, 50 kids and the students would help each other and we would help the students as well. But it wasn't as easy doing one-on-one instruction for bikes. But the feedback was great. The kids loved it, the parents loved it.

Speaker 1: 4:47

Um, the one problem we had in the beginning was we weren't thinking through the helmet situation and after, uh, the first day, there were parents complaining like, what are we doing about the, you know, possible lice and whatever bugs? Uh, you can't just be sharing helmets. So, talking to my principal, we got hairnets from the district, just like the lunch staff would have them, and they just gave us boxes of hairnets or the building supervisor could order them, just real cheap boxes of them, so the kids would wear hairnets and then put helmets on top of them so there wouldn't be any problems with the yeah, bugs from your hair or just people sweating. And you know how it is these days. You can't just share hats and helmets and things. I just didn't. I don't know why, I didn't foresee that, or I did, maybe, and it was like I don't know, maybe we could spray them or something. I don't know what to do. And uh again, after that it went pretty smoothly. It just it was great.

Speaker 1: 5:49

Every year we'd have it come out, the trailer we had dropped off. There was one time I think it was the last time we had it where we were expecting it, expecting it, and the class were ready and the kids were ready and they knew where they were coming. Some of the kids brought their own helmets and even bikes and the trailer was like an hour late or something and it was like, oh my gosh. So we had to postpone it. So it wasn't always perfect, but it was really great. It was just awesome. I'd even ride my bike to school, because I live close to my former school and you know I'd ride with the kids or I'd give my bike to one of my parents if I was doing something else. It was just a fun experience. I mean kids were just loving it. And even we had a baseball team come out our local baseball team like a single-A team and their mascot he's a tree basically, and there's pictures in the article I wrote about it so I'll have that in the show notes. His name was Sway. I think they changed team names so he's not the mascot anymore, but his name was Sway and he was a tree and he was riding a bike. It was awesome. It's just something that I think I miss it, because what happened was it was around the time of COVID, maybe it was a little before COVID.

Speaker 1: 7:02

I actually moved schools around the time of COVID, maybe it was a little before COVID. I actually moved schools around the time of COVID or just after it, but the district lost the grant for it and just the budget got cut. And I could tell every year we had it we probably had it for about four or five years Every year we'd kind of lose an instructor. There'd be like three or four instructors. They'd rotate. Maybe it was less, maybe I'm just remembering it wrong, but there was a few instructors, and then the next couple of years they just kept losing funding, losing instructors, and eventually the whole thing was gone. And when I moved to my new school I'd inquired about it, like thinking, oh, maybe they got it back, but they didn't.

Speaker 1: 7:46

So after talking to a couple teachers online and through Zoom with the interviews I've been doing, I talked to Dave LeCary. I want to give him a shout out here. He really gave me a great idea. I mean it was something I should have thought of before, honestly, but he has his own bike trailer and he teaches actually kindergartners how to ride bikes, which I don't know how I could do that with the number of kids we have. Now I have less classes at my new school. I only have about three to three and a half classes at a time. It depends on the splits and stuff like that and it's me and two paras, so basically I wouldn't get a class by myself. This is the and stuff like that. But and I three, it's me and two paras, so basically I would get a class by myself. This is the first year that's ever happened, by the way. I usually have two classes by myself and this year I have one to one and a half, which is really nice. So my goal and what he inspired me to do is to just build my own bike trailer, like, why not?

Speaker 1: 8:49

Now there's there's definitely problems or challenges with this. The first thing is I don't have any room, like we have zero room for this in our PE program, in our PE storage area, as a matter of fact, I have almost no room as it is for anything right now. I constantly throw things out, especially over the summer, and then I try to bring new things in and my office doubles as a storage unit or storage area. So we definitely don't have a lot of room to put bikes. We definitely don't have any room. So I was thinking maybe we can get an outside shed.

Speaker 1: 9:28

But, backing up a little bit, my first step was to talk to my principal. She's a new principal this year. She's the first year in my school, obviously, and she worked for the district for a long time. So when I approached her about this, she had already knew about the bike trailer and I said well, I just want to create more experiences for my students. That's almost always my goal and you know, I mentioned it to her and she's like oh yeah, I remember that, that bike trailer.

Speaker 1: 9:57

So I said, well, what if we just build our own bike trailer? You know what if we get parents to donate scooters and bikes? And you know, their kids have outgrown? It doesn't have to be junky ones, it could just be ones that they've outgrown and, yeah, maybe they can get $20 for it or something. But if they can donate it, knowing that other children will get the benefit of riding them at PE, I think our parents would be receptive of that. They definitely want to reach out to other people, other neighbors, family, you know, relatives, friends, for you know, just bikes they could donate. I mean, in my garage right now I have two scooters and a bike that neither of my kids ride. So I definitely consider donating. Well, I definitely donate them to our trailer. And again, she was very receptive of that.

Speaker 1: 10:49

This might take a little while and I told her this isn't a probably this year thing, it's for next year or the year after. But if we can get, you know, 15, even 15 bikes and scooters, we can do partners. You know, one partner can go the other partner can, you know around the track or on the obstacle course and then they could you know switch off If we get 30, that would be amazing. And you know, with split classes sometimes we get like 30 to 31 students, but that's about the maximum. So we could definitely do that. And you know we'd have to get helmets. Sometimes there are, I think there's, programs that are free for helmets for students. I'm going to reach out to my SRO I've already talked to him about that a little bit about you know there's different programs in that area. That a little bit about you know there's different programs in that area, definitely through the police departments and things like that. That again, donate free helmets.

Speaker 1: 11:46

Hairnets wouldn't be a problem, just order some more hairnets. The biggest thing would be storage, I think. And again, if we can get a shed for them, I could put it on the side of my PE pavilion. I think that'd be amazing. Now, getting the funding for that, that might be another thing. My plan is to write a grant for it or to see if someone again, I am not handy, I'm not handy-manny maybe some parents over the summer can help me build it. Again, I don't mind putting in the elbow grease, I just wouldn't be very good at building a trailer. It wouldn't look good at all, but that's my plan and you can do it too. I mean, think about it Through grants, through donations, through your PTO, through just your parents. They would love something like this. And it's amazing.

Speaker 1: 12:37

If you have the room and you have the means, or even if you don't just go back to my bag borrow and steal, bag borrow, actually build and steal equipment, you can make it happen, and that's my plan. I'm going to make it happen. It might take a year or two, but it's going to happen. And do that for yourself, do that for your program. It doesn't even have to be bikes, it can be anything you want. It can be scooters, it can be skateboards, it could be archery, it could be whatever you want it to be.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Build it If you dream it, build it, make it work, make it happen. And I'm not going to do a couple tips of the day, because that is it right there. Anything you want to make happen, you have to put in the work, put in the elbow grease and get going. So that's it for the day. Pe Nation, take care. You guys and girls are awesome, as always. Go to supersizefizedcom for more information and definitely join my Medium or Substack. Definitely, substack is where it's at. That's where I post a lot of things and Medium. If you want to get more links, articles, things like that, check the show notes and, yeah, have a great day, week, weekend, whenever you listen to this, and let's keep pushing our profession forward, thank you.