Bicycle and Pedestrian Education

These past couple of weeks, I've had the honor of working with the San Juan school district's Safe Routes To School program in Citrus Heights. It is incredibly clear that these children are in DIRE need of bicycle and pedestrian education. They live in neighborhoods that are very poorly suited for safe transportation--car drivers speed down narrow roads, bike lanes are filled with giant garbage piles, and sidewalks disappear and reappear without warning. The kids that do bike or walk often do so with little regard for legality or safety. Although the coordinator, Dan, has been working with the schools for the last few years to provide SRTS education, he is met with much difficulty and resistance due to over-crowded classes, crazy scheduling (many schools only have 1-2 PE classes/week), and dwindling funding. Although it would be wonderful to have enough time and money allow for a thorough instruction, Dan has done a fantastic job with the resources he has had to work with. 

One new part of MY own education was the introduction to pedestrian classes for the first through third grade classes. Never before had I realized the immense need for proper pedestrian classes. Although the basic lesson breaks down simply into "STOP at the edge, look left, look right, look left again," it is incredible to me how many children and adults are never taught how to cross a street. To my utter horror, in each of the classes we taught in, children would raise their hands and proceed to tell us a story of how their friend/brother/dogs/someone they knew had been hit by cars and were killed. I was floored. Dan assured me that they were, in fact, telling the truth and that he hears things like that all the time. 

Today, while we were practicing crossing at a crosswalk in front of the school, a group of second graders were watching a car that had stopped and was waiting for them to cross. The driver continued to inch forward, unsure if the kids were crossing or not (they were INSIDE the crosswalk). Because the students hesitated longer than this driver had patience for, even though it was his moving forward that made them uneasy, he sped through the crosswalk. To top it off, he felt the need to lean out the window and swear at them! Stupidly, this man was driving a company car while he did it. I caught the name and called his shop to relay the situation to the woman on the phone. 

Although working with these students and having to watch the terrible examples that the adults around them set, can be incredibly exhausting, I love this job. I love to see when our lessons suddenly click in a student's brain. I hope they go home and start critiquing their parents' behavior and point out that rolling through a stop sign is the wrong thing to do. Planting the seeds of proper transportation techniques early on will help them make better choices as they grow up. 

Teaching these students helps me realize all the lessons I need to pass on to my children. On our way home from my children's daycare, about three blocks away, we all walked together and talked about how to cross streets safely, what to look out for, and why walking somewhere is so much fun. It was a nice reminder to slow down even more and appreciate the very basic, wonderful form of transportation that is our own legs.