At Charlie's Freewheels we have incorporated riding skills into our build-a-bike program over the past few years. Here is what that currently looks like:

Our BAB program is 9-10 session (depending on holidays/illness etc.)

one session includes 1-1.5 hours of in-class Road Safety discussion and activities

Our final session is a RIDING session. This day includes helmets (fit, safety, and handing them out), handling skills which we do in a parking lot or on a basketball court, and a short group ride to ensure no one is unable to properly control their bikes.

Folks are encouraged to come back and join us for group rides which we used to do weekly, but we severely under-attended and created a frustrating workload for the person taking them on.

In our Summer day programs (Monday-Friday 10-3 for 2 weeks) we spend even more time on handling skills and road safety. We spend at last 2 hours in-class, as well as most of the final 2 days being handling skills and 2 group rides. We also ride further and are able to demonstrate more bicycle infrastructure during these sessions.

This year we are re-jigging our ride program to be more structured (rather than drop-in group rides) and to include more learn-to-ride content. I can't speak specifically to this but we can report back on it once we have the programs running!

 

Ainsley.

On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 8:57 AM, Stephen Andruski <swandruski@gmail.com> wrote:

I would consider partnering with a League Certified Instructor in your area, or CyclingSavvy (http://cyclingsavvy.org/). Also keep in mind that your liability insurance might not cover organized rides - check on that so you're not putting the group at risk. And as many of you know, youth programs may also require different coverage, along with obviously different teaching skills.

Steve Andruski

The Rockville Bike Hub

www.rockvillebikehub.org

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 6:57 PM, <cyclista@inventati.org> wrote:

I'd like info on this as well. Recycle Ithaca's bicycles doesn't currently have a riding component, though we used to years ago. Even when we did have one it didn't work all that well. So I also think it would be nice to hear how other people structure their riding programs, and what the foci are.

cyclista Nicholas

On 2018-02-13 22:53, bike club wrote:

Hey Folks,

We are hoping to create a riding/ road skills component  to our drop-in
youth shop program and I am wondering about the logistics/legalities of how
to approach this!

For over six month now we've been hosting a drop-in shop program as a
collaboration between Pedal Society and Kickstand community bikes one
afternoon a week where teens can drop in and get free support servicing
their bikes, volunteer on shop projects to learn mechanics skills, and
volunteer as part of our earn a bike program.In an effort to make the
program as low barrier as possible we have left it as a drop in program vs.
having a formal sign up, etc. The drop in is slowly growing a devoted crew
of regulars. YAY!

It has come to our attention that many teens, especially those who have not
previously had access to a bike, do not have competency navigating the
roads safely. In an effort to remedy this and build road skills and riding
into our program, our thought is to make one week of the month our teen
community ride and another day our road skills learning in the parking lot.
It seems like hosting a road skills/riding session as a drop-in, with
different people showing up every week would come with a host of challenges
and complexities.

Right now, our best idea, is that youth who will be leaving the parking lot
with us on monthly rides will need a consent form and to have demonstrated
a certain aptitude for riding. We're not exactly sure how to test for this
or how exactly to go about teaching road skills on a drop in basis on a
different monthly day while other folks are in the shop with the other
instructor. How can we build on road skills when different people may show
up every week?

Therefore, my associated questions are:

   - Structure: Does anyone have any feedback on how to structure this? If
   we have different youth coming in all the time, it's kind of hard to build
   on road skills that take more than one day to teach
   - is it feasible to have a drop in program that teaches riding skills?
   - If many teenagers want to come on a community ride, do we need to cap
   it like a formal program (2 instructors per 10 youth) or is there a way to
   facilitate a larger more open community ride?

I'd love to hear any feedback folks have  for how to make this happen.

Woohoo!


Sarah


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