just like riding a bike

There's lots of stuff I don't like to admit. Like: I don't buy peanut butter anymore because I was consuming a jar a week. Or: I wept like a beaten child at the end of Ice Age 2*. Also: I have never seen any of the Godfather movies, and I probably never will. And of course: When I lived in Kentucky I watched Project Runway. A lot.



Up until recently I had one admission that didn't bother me so much. Said admission being that, other than the one time in France, I've never ridden a bike. I just never learned. And I've told people over and over again, always savoring a bit of satisfaction in their shock: "What?!" "Really?!" "Where the hell did you grow up?" "Can you swim?!"

I can swim.

Typically, this encounter involved me and one or two other people at a time. Yesterday, however, I was submerged into a world wholly unknown to me: the indoor bicycle race. Far be it from me to refuse an evening of beer and sweaty men in spandex. This is a world of people obsessed with bicycles and riding them and talking about them and fixing them and reading about them and bragging about crashing them. A world of uniform uniqueness just like good ol Emerson College. With their tattoos, hooded sweatshirts, "no one else here has ever seen this t-shirt" t-shirts, and tight pants. Also beards. They love beards.

I'm sitting in the middle of this bikefest like a dude with herpes on Spring Break. Do I tell them...?? Can they tell anyway...?

It is like any subculture, I guess, so the concept isn't new to me. Any gathering of runners is just as ridiculous in its obsessiveness. I have purchased my fair share of runner crap. I subscribe to Runner's World; I have a runner hero; I have run a race with a broken foot. I love talking about running, reading about running, looking over my running log, and of course actually running. But running can be painful, arduous...I can understand why someone would think that loving it is pure madness. In fact, at any of the bizillion running events I've been to, never have I heard anyone trying to convince a non-runner to run.


Not so for the bikers! They will make you sit on a bike, they will offer to teach you to ride a bike, they will offer to find you a bike, they will offer you a bike they have sitting in their basement. They will stop at nothing.

[I just need to interrupt myself here for a second to report live, from my desk, in the deserted basement o' learning: I just bought a bag of peanut m&ms from the vending machine upstairs. I am about 3/4 of the way through this sucker and I have to let it out: There are NO peanuts in this bag. They are just giant m&ms. Forgotten peanuts. What the fuck, Mars, Inc??]

Enter Wicked Mature Kelly. I ask you to envision the following conversation:

Me: I will not eat the broccoli.
Adult: Yes you will.
Me: No. I won't.
Adult: Eat the broccoli or you can't watch a movie after dinner.
Me: Fine.
Adult: Okay, no movies til you eat broccoli.
Me: I will never watch movies again.
Adult: Kelly, just eat the broccoli....


This might as well have happened when I was 25, because nothing has changed. My decision to NOT do something involuntarily cements itself at the exact moment I am told I should do the given thing. It's the eight year old reflex. I've got it big time.

In the midst of my internal resistance and surrounded by sweat and spandex, a tiny tiny microscopic portion of my stubborn constitution gave a little. Mentally, I revisited the sole instance of my bike ridership. The following conditions applied:
1. I was in France, and therefore all drunk on cheese
2. The bike path was entirely closed to traffic
3. The person with whom I took the ride had also never ridden a bike
4. The temptation for "it's just like riding a bike" jokes was just too strong

...What I didn't realize was that the distance between the bike path and the sheer rock face of the cliffs of insanity, a reassuring fifteen feet at the rental shop, narrowed to approximately three inches for the last several miles of the trip. That's another story entirely. It involves elevated blood pressure and walking.

Like most everything I see and do in the world, I relate this back to teaching. The conditions necessary for me to try a new thing (which is all that learning is) were:

• I was in a place that held no memories of previous failures. While I feared for my safety (and the safety of anyone biking near me) I didn't worry about being judged.



• The place was secluded from real or perceived dangers (at least initially, the dangers being cars. The cliffs of insanity kinda ruin this part of the analogy.)



• The person with whom I DID the learning was learning herself.

So, how do I make my classroom like a small fishing village in France? It seems like the work to be done first is twofold. One, getting students to abandon any negative associations with the classroom. Too often the simple act of sitting in a desk and looking at a white board immediately brings back negative feelings in students, especially those who have left the mainstream system. In my opinion this is best done by getting the hell out of the classroom. Field trips don't have to be elaborate, expensive, or rare. One of the best trips I've ever done was just a walk down the street to practice descriptive writing. They could have just as easily described the classroom, but the act of walking out of school and describing a neutral place brought out some great writing and some improved attitudes. And it was free! Two, making sure you are willing to be wrong in the classroom. Being fallible in the classroom helps build trust and makes students feel like they aren't being judged. This is my rationale for being wrong a lot, but I'm pretty attached to it at this point. Also, I have found that cheese and baguettes serve a person well in any situation.

*I am sorry, but when Queen Latifah and Ray Romano realize that they are not the last Woolly Mammoths on Earth, and that they do not have to stay together to save the species, but choose to stay together for LOVE, that shit is a tissue-fest and you know it.