Bicycling in PhysEd Class
February 15, 2010
San Francisco Unified School District
San Francisco students bicycling because of Presidio YMCA's YBike program. Read more here...
Innovative new Bicycling and Bicycle Safety program at James Lick Middle School funded by California Kids’ Plates and free to SFUSD students.
Students in Kyle Noone’s physical education (PE) classes at James Lick Middle School start this week in the first Bicycle and Bicycle Safety program at the school in many years. The innovative 2-week program will start just days after the announcement of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative, which seeks to combat childhood obesity in part by increasing physical activity, through giving children “safe routes to walk and ride to school, parks, playgrounds and community centers where they can play and be active after school, and sports, dance or fitness programs that are exciting and challenging to keep them engaged.”(Source: www.letsmove.gov)
"Providing bike riding education during PE gets children active and provides them the opportunity to become skilled, knowledgeable and responsible cyclists,” says Ana Validzic, Safe Routes to School Project Manager at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “SFUSD students benefit from unique opportunities such as this that will promote long-term healthy lifestyle changes.”
Brought to James Lick through a partnership with the Presidio Community YMCA Bicycle Program (YBike), which also runs one of its popular after-school bike clubs at the school, the program comes at no cost to students or the district. It is funded primarily by a timely grant from California Kids’ Plates (www.kidsplates.org), which helped ensure the continuation of the program after successful pilot programs at Francisco and Marina Middle Schools last year.
Mr. Noone and the League of American Bicyclists-Certified Instructors of the YBike program will teach students bicycling handling skills as well as bicycle and traffic safety. Noone says he and his students are “super excited” to get on bikes. He says he can’t wait for the program because “bike riding is an amazing lifelong activity, not only good for the body but good for the environment, too, and it’s great for middle-school kids because it gives them lots of confidence.”
The program has been a success so far at the other schools at which it was piloted, including Lowell High School and Marina and Francisco Middle Schools. Juliette Sui, a physical education teacher at Francisco, says the bike program benefits her students “because it helps them learn about safety and awareness and helps them for lifelong fitness because they learn how to ride a bike safely and they can do that for the rest of their lives.”
Terence Doherty, the first PE teacher in the district to conduct this program together with Presidio Community YMCA Bicycle Program staff, agrees that bicycling “really ties in to our goal of giving kids skills they can use for an active lifestyle.” Doherty noted that many San Francisco students never have the opportunity to try riding a bike elsewhere. 10 of the 73 high school students in his classes this fall had never been on a bicycle before. He found information in old files at Lowell showing that cycling was common in physical education classes at Lowell as recently as the 1970s, although the extent to which it has been since is not known.
Students in the Marina Middle School program improved their bicycle and traffic safety knowledge by an average of 40%. They also were physically moving for over 50% of the total class time, meeting an emerging standard for physical education programs set by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
The program furthers the San Francisco Unified School District’s policy of promoting bicycling in the district, to go with the new bike racks that have been installed at schools throughout the district as well as SFUSD’s new Safe Routes to School program, started this year at 5 pilot elementary schools. Led by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the Safe Routes to School program is a joint effort among city departments and community groups, including SFUSD, SF Municipal Transportation Agency, SF Police Department, and the Presidio Community YMCA.
It also accomplishes goals set out in San Francisco’s Bike Plan, recently back on track in a big way after a 3-year injunction prevented any physical bike improvements to San Francisco’s streets. “We’re thrilled to see the City making progress on important elements of the official Bike Plan such as this program bringing bicycle safety education directly into San Francisco schools," says Leah Shahum, Executive Director of the 11,000-member San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. "This is especially critical now as more people are choosing to bicycle and as the City makes more street improvements to encourage people of all ages to choose active, healthy transportation."
The Presidio Community YMCA Bike Program (YBike) delivers professional youth and family bicycle safety education programs through school-based programs and community outreach, including after-school programs, in-school programs such as bicycle safety rodeos or bicycle and traffic safety training in physical education classes or via Safe Routes to School programs, and evening and weekend classes at the Presidio Community YMCA. YBike programs teach bicyclists of all ages and abilities to ride a bicycle safely, get them physically active and outdoors, and improve their health and the community.
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