Each year throughout New Jersey, high schools offer their students driver’s education classes to learn the rules of the road and focus on becoming safe motorists.  But what are schools doing for young bicyclists?  Ocean Township offers an instructive model on how one school district has begun to address bicycle safety.

 

Just as driver’s education classes help create safer motorists, bicycle education is one of the most effective ways to improve safety by teaching students the proper way to ride and how to safely share the road with automobiles, pedestrians, and other cyclists. The most common form of bicycle education now available to school-age children is a bike safety rodeo typically held after school hours or on weekends. Bike rodeos are usually brief, one-day events featuring bike safety inspections, quick tune-ups, and a short safety lecture about the rules of the road. Rodeos are a good start to bicycle education but there is often little time for on-bike skills education and drills.  Because of this, they are not able to address many of the situations young cyclists will encounter once they get on their bikes.

 

In Ocean Township, physical education teachers have started going beyond the bike rodeo, working with the NJ BIKESChOOL program to introduce a bicycle education unit into their curriculum. NJ BIKESChOOL is a comprehensive, on-bike safety

program targeted to children in grades 4 through 6. Through this pilot program, a fleet of bicycles and a variety of educational materials were made available to physical education teachers in Ocean Township. 

 

Getting Started  
The New Jersey Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (NJAHPERD) was instrumental in bringing NJ BIKESChOOL to Ocean Township.  This non-profit, membership organization of professionals is committed to the advancement of quality health, physical education, recreation and dance programs.  NJAHPERD is also committed to making every New Jersey student stronger and healthier, so that their adult lives may be healthier and longer. The association promotes the teaching of life skills and the concepts and attitudes to support an active lifestyle.  Through NJAHPERD's encouragement and sponsorship, 20 physical education teachers from New Jersey, including several from Ocean Township, completed a teacher training program. Shortly after the training was completed, instructors at the high school, intermediate and elementary schools were making plans to implement bicycle education in their classes. 

 

Bicycle Education at Wayside School
At Ocean Township’s Wayside Elementary School, in-school bicycle