Girard Academic Music Program (GAMP) students Jose, Santino and Jeremy were asked by their high school teacher, Brian Terpak, to solve a problem in their community for a class project. Through the guidance of Mr. Terpak, the three students contacted Safe Routes Philly, to help solve the problem of bicycle transportation and safety in GAMP's community of South Philadelphia. And what started out as a class community service project, became a training session and partnership with the Safe Routes Philly program.

Safe Routes Philly is a youth education and encouragement program of Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. Their mission is to promote biking and walking to school as fun, healthy and sustainable forms of transportation for Philadelphia public school students. Safe Routes Philly employs community representatives who train elementary physical education and health teachers to teach their bicycle and pedestrian safety lessons to 2nd and 5th grades students. 

The three students were put in contact with Diana Owens, Program Director of Safe Routes Philly and Steve Taylor, Safe Route Philly's community representative for South Philadelphia. They all met to conduct a training session for the three GAMP students, to provide them with knowledge and lessons to take back with them.

Before the training, all three students were asked to share about their experiences biking in the city. Jeremy admitted to having the most experience, using his bike as a mode of transportation to visit friends throughout the city. Diana discussed the benefits of biking, which included easy parking spots, cheaper than owning a car, keeping a fit/active lifestyle, and sustainability. Diana also stressed the importance of how much fun riding a bike can be as well as building a community around bike culture. 

Diana pointed out that none of the students brought helmets, which she stressed as a very important element in bicycle safety. Fortunately for Jeremy, Santino and Jose, all three were given bicycle helmets to keep courtesy of Safe Routes Philly. The helmets were used in a demonstration of properly fitting a bicycle helmet. All three students were trained using the eyes, ears and mouth technique. They were also taught the ABC quick check routine which should be followed each time before riding.

Both Diana and Steven emphasized Philadelphia bicycle laws and discussed the differences between state and city laws. The few laws that Diana and Steve emphasized were not cycling on side walks (unless under the age of 12) and riding single file with the direction of traffic. There were some questions asked about proper lane positioning in two way, one way and two lane scenarios as well as various turning techniques. Steve and Diana stressed the adherence to street signs, as bikes are considered legal vehicles under the law. 

The time came to go over the on-bike portion of the training. The three students were given a diagram of how to set up cones to practice the correct distance in which a biker would need to use a hand signal to turn. This activity helped all three students understand how to signal a turn, practice the proper distance in making the hand signal from the turn and practice spotting for cars or other elements that would be a risk to the rider's safety.

Jeremy, Santino and Jose all seemed to be enjoying the experience, and seemed eager to implement the trainings and lessons back at GAMP. When asked about possible ways of relaying the information back to the GAMP students, all three students felt that they could turn the information into a school wide presentation or present the information on a class by class basis. Diana gave the students a binder full of lesson plans and other teaching strategies, and activity booklets to take with them for their presentations. 

Steve, the South Philadelphia community representative, would follow up with Jeremy, Santino and Jose to check on the progress at GAMP. One thing both Diana and Steve agreed to help Jeremy, Jose and Santino do was getting their bike rack fixed at GAMP. During the training the three boys expressed their hopes that their efforts would help increase the amount of students biking to school and increase bicycle safety awareness.

Citizen Philadelphia hopes to follow up on this story, to see the progress Jeremy, Santino and Jose have made at GAMP high school.