“Reading Bicycles”

So my friend, @aksmscrowley invites everyone to a 30 day blog challenge this weekend.

I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to 30 consecutive days of blogging, but I’m ready to write right now.

This is the story of four girls, one goal, two states, and learning to let go.

My 6 YO daughter, Irene was learning to ride a bike earlier this past summer.  In fact, both she and her younger sister, 4 YO Barbara (don’t you love the throwback names?) have been hard at it.

Of course, my girls are like many others; they started with training wheels.

I am a teacher of writing as well as a father and husband, so my mind is whirling and analyzing, reflecting on every imaginable possibility and lesson to be gleaned from this life experience.

My wife @asedun and I knew introducing the skill and activity was one thing, but frequency was another.  Our kids—and I would argue, all kids—need the frequency of attempts and experiences in order to acquire and then master a skill.

So we got in the habit of taking the girls (and our little Joseph) out to the nearby school parking lot whenever we could.

An hour in the late afternoon.  Twenty minutes just before dusk.  You name it; whenever there was a break in the weather (or heat) and in our schedules, we hit the parking lot, loaded with bikes and helmets and distractions for little bro.

And it all worked very well.

Both girls learned how to ride their bikes with training wheels.

But then Irene wasn’t satisfied with training wheels; she wanted to ride without them.

So flash forward to mid-summer.

Our family took a long weekend vacation to New Jersey, where we stayed with my cousin and went to Bradley Beach from there.

One evening, his girls (about the same ages as ours) took us for a ride around the neighborhood block on their bikes.  The adults walked and the older kids split two bikes and one scooter between them.

Evie’s bike did not have training wheels.

I watched Irene watch Evie on this tour of the neighborhood.

She was actually studying Evie. I could tell!  This wasn’t a glance; this wasn’t a tag-along for the stroll kind of affair for her.  This was a study session with a more advanced peer, as Vygotsky would say.

Evie was kind enough to let Irene use her bike for a little.

“OK, Dad,” she said, smiling. “I think I’m ready to try this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Just don’t let go until I’m ready!”

“OK.”

So I scurried along with her riding until she said, “OK, let go but stay close to me!”

She giggled with fear and delight.

As she rode, my hands just inches away—her running safety net—in case she fell.

A few seconds was all. Then just as suddenly, she squealed with that strange amalgam of mirth and fear: “OK! Hold on to me!”

Flash forward again to the next week.

We took the girls to the school parking lot again, fresh from a long weekend at my cousin’s in the Garden State.

The bikes came out. Helmets on. But what was Reenie doing? Usually, she just took off right away. This time, she sat on her bike looking down and very thoughtfully, slowly, almost theatrically at her feet. I saw her feet tap the pedals and it appeared she was working through a problem in her mind.

We watched her, while Barbara took off on her own bike with training wheels.

Irene came to me and said, “OK, Dad, I think I’m ready to take the training wheels off.”

“OK,” I said with a smile.

So we both got the ratchet set out of the back of the van and her own hands helped loosen the training wheels to her bike.

That’s where I’ll leave the story at this point.

The rest, you can imagine, is part of our family history.

But I couldn’t end this entry without a few reflections related to teaching writing.

Irene wasn’t just learning how to ride a bike; she was learning how to read and write. When she was studying and watching her cousin, Evie in New Jersey on her own bike, she witnessed someone who showcased the fluency with the skill she valued and desired—namely, riding a bike without training wheels.

Her literacy with bike-riding began earlier, as we supported it explicitly with high frequency of encounters with the text called bicycling.

I call this activity a text deliberately.

Indeed, the more I read, write, learn, think, and teach, the more I arrive at the conclusion that EVERYTHING IS TEXT—written, read, re-written.

And just as important in all of this? Irene’s voice and enfranchisement to determine when she was ready to let go.

So you’ll notice in the pictures included in this post that the progression goes from looking down, to growing confidence enough to look away and ride without training wheels, to even riding down a small set of steps.

You’ll notice the family picture below that. This isn’t just another snapshot of a family playing outside. It’s a picture of a family sharing the literacies involved in new encounters, new experiences. How appropriate that my wife, the leader in literacy education in our family, is pictured here, once again leading our girls toward greater fluency with skills like bike-riding.

I decided to end with the picture of Barbara, who still rides with training wheels. But she’s growing her capacity and strengthening her fluency in riding.

Just as Evie was a living mentor-text for Irene learning to ride without training wheels, so too is Irene now a living mentor-text for Barbara, animating a real-life script that says, YES, YOU CAN DO IT! Si se puede!

We learn to read and write the texts of our lives through community near and far, two states, three continents, and five generations away sometimes, but we do this together.

Here’s to letting go and letting others in to the texts of our literate lives!