Conversations with Erica - Guest: Coach Sam Balto, Bike Bus World
You are listening to conversations with Erica. I'm your host, Erica Mattison. On today's episode, I'm joined by my longtime friend and fellow advocate, Sam Balto. Sam is a physical education teacher based in Portland, Oregon. He's also the co-founder and executive director of Bike Bus World. His work to transform getting to school into a healthy, fun social event is inspiring people all over the world to start their own walking and biking school buses.
Join us as we explore how to cultivate a sense of independence among youth and how to create a meaningful, impactful life.
Coach, thanks for taking the time to be here and share about your journey. Tell us what you've been up to lately. This past school year was exciting. I took a break from teaching on a sabbatical to start bike bus world.
I really got to tour the country and tour the world, seeing different bike buses. I was in four countries, participated in over 13 bike buses, and it was incredible to see the joy the bike bus movement is creating in communities. Wow. I didn't know about that. I can't wait to hear more. Tell us how you got into this.
It's been a long journey. My social media presence started years before we knew each other back in Boston in like 2000 15, 16, 17 sort of time. I was teaching at Ellis Elementary in Roxbury School district. Had a grant to start a state route to school program. I was one of the 20 school champions. My first year I did a walking school bus up to.
Create more opportunities for [00:02:00] physical activity. There's benefits to kids being active for 60 minutes, but at my school in Boston, they had PE once a week. They had recess once a day for 15 minutes, and so the kids, not all of them, were able to go home and play outside or be on sports teams. You're always trying to find other creative ways to get more physical activity.
For me personally, I ride my bike everywhere. I really like it 'cause it's, you know, I'm not like having to create a new thing. It's my way of transportation and I get physical activity through that. So I thought that works for me. That would work for kids. We did a walking school bus, an organized walk to school on a designated route.
We had eight kids the first time, and I just remember we, us getting to school and I was like, oh my gosh, this is it. This is what we need to be doing. As a teacher who had bus duty and crossing guard duty and the chaos of all of [00:03:00] those, and then you experienced the joy and the community of a walking school bus, you're transformed and passionate about that and for the next.
Year and a half we did more walking school buses, different routes, adding, coming from different areas. And every single time we'd have more and more kids, more and more people from the community participating. And I always think of, we did a bike bus from one of my, for one of my students, re Who lives like right on the borderline.
So he qualified for the bus, but his mom would tell us that like sometimes he wouldn't get home until two hours after the school day ended. 'cause the buses were so delayed. I'd always see him in the morning, like coming off the school bus after the bell rushing downstairs to get his breakfast rushing back upstairs.
Nothing about this is setting Quadir up for a successful school day. And you know, you would see him, he is a kid a fourth grader who gets in trouble a lot. And I remember we did the walking school bus that [00:04:00] he was able to participate in. And I'm eating lunch in the gym. My gym door is locked for some quiet I hear banging on the door.
I'm like, who's there? And I go and I open it's quad year asking when the next walk in school bus is. When you get that reaction, if you know you're doing something right. It sounds like a simple solution, yet it's not obvious or everybody would be doing it now. Yeah. I mean there's some amount of stuff that goes into it.
I think it takes a certain amount of people willingness to put themselves out there and to try something and to take a risk. Maybe they're worried people won't show up, but bike buses, walking, school buses, people crave this stuff. It is in our genetic code to be physically active and socially connected.
When you present an option focused on kids and joy, people show up. School car lines. I don't know if [00:05:00] you know the chaos from parents driving. It's a vicious cycle they're in and you are providing a solution that gives people more choices. As an American, we love our choices, so let's give people more tools to get to school in different ways.
It sounds like there's so many benefits to it. It sounds like it's low cost and like it has all of these benefits that will help students be better learners too. I call bike buses, walking school buses, the Swiss Army knife to school issues. If a principal or administrator or superintendent is trying to deal with absenteeism or test scores or just conduct behavior, all of those can be solutions through active transportation.
It's just well researched that kids do better academically when physically active before school. They get in trouble less, they have better social relationships. So we should be doing everything we can in terms of our policy decisions to [00:06:00] prioritize and make it as easy and convenient and safe. My understanding is from seeing your videos, which I love the weekly video of you all writing to school together.
It seems like it's something that helps kids also developed this confidence. And this independence because they can go with this group to school and they don't need a parent or guardian necessarily to be escorting them or bringing them. Can you say a little bit about that? Absolutely. As a parent, the benefit I love about the bike bus, there's times of awareness and research about the importance of children's independence and its impact on children's mental health.
There's a book called The Anxious Generation that's. Gotten a lot of attention by Jonathan Haight. One of his pillars is to give kids more freedom in the real world and less online. And I feel like that's very easy to say and much harder for families and parents to implement because we've spent the past 30, 40, 50 [00:07:00] years sort of this very individualistic culture.
If your kid has any uncomfortable situations, you're a bad parent. Our job is to just create this. Bubble around our kids where they never have to be uncomfortable, but they need a certain amount of uncomfortableness and risk that helps build their confidence and helps build their ability to be successful in the real world.
It's tied to their mental health. Parents need help giving kids more independence. And so a bike bus, a walking school, buses, a organized bike ride. So there's caring adults who have certain roles, and what we sort of see is the first time. The parent and the kid come and they're riding side by side and a couple weeks later the kid's like, deuces, mom or dad, I'm gonna go ride up in the front with the speaker and my friend.
What I'm trying to get more is like parents being like, all right, parents, your kids know how to do this. I know it's fun seeing other adults and the social component, but it's really important that your kid has this independence. [00:08:00] They might bike their kid to the start and then go back home. Or maybe we had this one mom who biked their kid to the start bike to school, but not on the bike route.
Just to ease that mama bear concerns in terms of getting, you know, like wanting to know that their kid made it. But now he doesn't do that anymore to bike their kid. Kid and their neighbor friends bite to the start without the parent. The parent gets to stay in their pajamas, drinking coffee. But now it may be time for the bike bus for the adults because they wanna get in on the fun.
Yeah, I mean, it's a gate problem. I started a bike bus to my son's school two years ago, and that has a much higher percentage of parents who ride with the kids. But even now, we will have kids, parents don't join. But I know those kids now I know who the parents are. If there was an issue or something like that, I would feel comfortable reaching out and following up.
Does it seem like many of the adults who learned [00:09:00] about this have started bike commuting or incorporating more physical activity into their lives? Once you have your bike set up, the gear helmet, bike locks easier to do it regularly. It's the initial getting all the stuff you need. And I've gotten messages from parents being like over the summer being like, Hey, like my daughter refuses to get in the car, and she makes sure that we bike to the post office and to the grocery store.
And it really is cool to see how the kids see and feel, how much benefit they get out of that, and how much better it is than being in the backseat of a car. Kids can be very persuasive. When you sell it to kids in a fun way, they wanna come. Kids wanna be with their friends, they wanna be outside. But when you look at the built environment, these neighborhoods where you don't have a friend in the 30 houses in this little housing development, and the only entry and exit is a highway, how are they supposed to get [00:10:00] to their friend's house?
They're stuck. They're gonna find a way to be with their friends, and it's online playing video games. When you create spaces that get children opportunity to be more independent, they're gonna wanna be with their friends. Now that you've been leading the bike bus for several years, what kinds of examples do you have of the impact that this has had on some of the students?
Any others that come to mind for you? I hear all the time about impacts on confidence, kids being more focused during the school day. Kids take a lot of pride in it, part of their identity. We did some advocacy work for better infrastructure, passing a bill in Oregon, students testified, shared their experience, but building their skills, learning they have agency can create change in their community.
That just creates the snowball effect where they wanna be active citizens as they get older and they know their voice matters and [00:11:00] they're seen. It's really cool. Our leaders are paying attention, seeing that all across the country and all around the world, that people are seeing the seats filled with joy with children and they're responding.
I remember when I was a youth activist, it was such a confidence builder to feel I could influence something, get my school to change its practices and make them more environmentally responsible. I imagine for these youth as well that it really is such a confidence booster and a skill builder. Yeah. We have a survey to bike bus leaders from around.
The world. I think it's up to 180 now. Different bike buses that have built out the survey. And one of the questions is, what inspired you to start a bike bus? Something like 40 plus percent said Coach Falta Alameda bike bus. I communicate that to the kids that like they are creating this massive impact by [00:12:00] riding that they're inspiring more people, more communities to start their own bike bus.
Kids just wanna be kids and have fun with their friends. But I definitely do believe that like when the kids are older, they'd be like, oh my gosh, we really created some serious teens in the world. That's so special. It's easy for people to feel like, what I do doesn't matter, I'm only one person. But what you've been demonstrating is that when you have a vision, believe in it, go for it, and bring people together.
It's incredible what can happen and how many lives can be impacted. Absolutely the size of your bike bus doesn't mean one is better. Are you creating an opportunity for community and joy and are you making an impact to the kids that are there and making them feel seen and feel special? That's it. It doesn't matter the size.
My bike bus isn't better because it's bigger. It's about showing up for the community and showing up for kids. That's the thing [00:13:00] that really matters. The number of people who show up for any given bike. Bus is not the most important aspect. It's the impact that is being felt by the participants and by people who are even being able to watch it or learn about it.
That really matters. I the bike bus to my sun school, it's much smaller and I remember the first year is like one rainy December day. My son in the cargo bike, one middle schooler. That was awesome for that kid that made a difference. He got to ride a bike to school when he otherwise wouldn't have ridden.
To be able to create that and for that kid to feel like the community cares has massive impacts. One of the things that strikes me about this story is that this was not in your job description, really took it upon yourself. So will you share a little bit about that [00:14:00] for the people listening who feel limited by their job description and have aspirations of doing something meaningful if it taps into their skills?
I was talking to someone recently and they're like, how'd you get here? I was the captain of my high school hockey team. I was a summer camp counselor. That was a formative experience. I worked as a field organizer on the Obama campaign in 2008. I worked for a national nonprofit called Playworks, which organizes resources and class game times, conflict resolution in schools and Title one schools.
Took my A DHD skills of understanding space and to feel organized. Kind of played on that. Well, then I went to grad school becoming a PE teacher. Finding ways for kids to be physically active. I also started learning about street design and how that impacts how people get [00:15:00] around. Don't read the book Walkable Cities by Jeff Spec.
Once you read it, you can't unsee it, and so that means it's a good book. I was in Boston and oh my gosh, this totally makes sense how certain places you feel like you wanna go for a walk and other places you don't. I like to advocate. I like to berate some ruckus. Speeds on my creativity and put all those pieces together, and I'm very stubborn.
I feel resilient in that. I don't give up. They get roadblocks and then you just try something else. We did our first bike bus for Earth Daddy. We had 75 kids. It was over 10% on the school, and I was like, let's go. This is everything. This is the joy. It really captures people's imagination and the kids loved it.
The kids were asking for it. It's just been incredible to see how it's gone. What advice would you give to people who are feeling like they're limited by their [00:16:00] role or their title and maybe they feel they don't have the necessary training credentials, degrees or qualifications, but want to do something different, maybe entrepreneurials, what would you say to them?
Just do it. If it's your moral compass, I care about kids and I wanna be child focused. If it's about bringing community together or helping people, you don't need permission for these things. This is a message people need to hear. You don't need permission to make your communities better. The first year I started a bike bus to my son's school.
He is in kindergarten, and that spring we're biking to the start of the bike bus and my son looks at me and he goes, dad, who's the boss of the bike bus? I'm like, what do you mean? Who told you to start a bike bus to my school? Nobody did. I just thought it would be positive and make friends and get some physical activity.
Cool. I love the bike bus. We always say there's no boss of the bike bus. I [00:17:00] run a non-profit to help people, but I'm not the boss of the bike bus. You just do it. It's not your job to solve all of societal's ills and so people will be like, I wanna start a bike bus, but what about kids who don't have bikes?
Absolutely this is rounded in inclusion and equity and there are these systems and people have some and people have less, but you are not going to be able to remove those barriers for those other people unless you start with where you can start and you get more people joining what you are doing.
Start with what you can do and as you do it consistently. More people will join and help renew barriers. I had a talk with this dad yesterday in Edmonton. He's an engineer, total engineer brain. I could tell from his email and he's like, what do you do about the ride home? Sign offs and stuff. Aren. Most bike buses don't do rides home because it's logistically more challenging if a parent [00:18:00] or a kid says, oh, I wanna do the bike bus, but there's not an opposite home.
Then I feel like it is your place to try to pair them up with someone. It's cool. Are you going in this direction? But unless someone raises their hand, we don't need a makeup problems. It's a two-way street. People need to show up and ask for help. It's okay to be vulnerable and ask for help. That's what we're here to do.
They brought up permission. Recognizing somebody isn't necessarily going to bestow upon you the ability to do these things. It can be self-directed and. Democratic. You don't have to have it all figured out to get started. You don't have to have every single detail and every single contingency figured out before you get something going, at least on a small scale.
Then you adjust, improve. Consistency is one of those special ingredients about the bite bug. When I say consistency, it's not every [00:19:00] day. It's not once a week. It's like as consistently as you can consistently do it. People will be like, oh, you should do it five days a week. And I'm like, are you one? Are you gonna pay me?
No. Okay, then I'm gonna decide what I have capacity to do. Five. Do it five days a week. I'm gonna get burnt out and I'm gonna be annoyed once a week. Works for me and my schedule with my family. Well, that's what we're gonna do. If somebody wants another day, I'll add you to the flyer and you lead it. This is where I can show up.
So that sustainable aspect, not trying to have it be so comprehensive that it's gonna lead to burnout, but really thinking of what's the rhythm, the flow, the pace that feels right for you. So it sounds like there's this level of listening in and experimenting that's maybe happened that has led you to this frequency.
Feels good. Yeah. It doesn't have [00:20:00] to be a certain distance. In Boston, we did walkin school buses like once a fall, winter spree, and then a mom was like, oh, we should do a walking school bus every Friday from this park. That was a hundred yards from school. So we met at a park a hundred yards away. You could see the school, the kids would play.
The parents would sometimes bring Muppets. We had city counselors come and visit us sometimes, and then we just walked to school. And it was amazing. I remember there's this parent who was driving his daughter to school and was like, wait a minute, can my daughter walk with you all? Absolutely. And he stopped his car in the middle of traffic, got his daughter out and helped her cross the street for that parent.
That parent law does not need to be in the school car line. That kid got a hundred more yards of physical activity we have here fun. 'cause more kids were participating and it was like. A hundred yards. So like doesn't have to be, oh, it has to be two miles. Do what works for you, what you can show up [00:21:00] consistently and a hundred yards with a hundred more yards of physical activity.
It's that many less cars showing up to school, creating a chaotic, polluted environment where children are learning. You and I met originally in Boston. Yes. And then we got to spend some time together in Portland, Oregon, and Boston. So we have, yeah. This bi-coastal thing going on. I'm curious how you've been able to really connect with people all over the world.
Sometimes we let things like time zone or culture or language or other things be barriers. Could you say a little bit about how you've been able to work with people across different situations, different size organizations or communities? I feel lucky to. See these glimpses of different communities all around the world.
I was in Portland, Texas this March doing a bike [00:22:00] bus with a PE teacher that had started it, and Portland is like 45 minutes north of Corpus Christi and they just do the last Friday of every month. And to see the joy and to see how this community, I think we right off Texas as, oh, it's Texas big trucks.
Sure they like their trucks, but they also like biking. And the kids absolutely loved it. They did their bike bus on the sidewalk and there was like a painted bike lane. I remember I posted a video and somebody's in the chat, why are they biking on the sidewalk? They should be in the same 'cause that's what they needed to do to be able to do this.
I don't pay them. I'm not the boss of them. They get to do what feels right for them. Maybe over time they'll feel more comfortable with the kids' biking skills. Hey, we need more than paint. Can you put up flex post meeting communities where they're at and not judging them for doing [00:23:00] things a certain way?
I can be a stubborn person sometimes, and I've really learned that there's multiple ways to do things, and the way I like to do things is oftentimes not the best way for other people. And so you present a lot of different ways of entry and feeling a part of it. I call bike bus, the original Barbie, because it's not like if you do Barbie or bus if you don't do a bike bus, you're less than.
There's lots of different ways to promote joy, promote physical activity, be child focused.
There's family bike rides, walking school buses and school streets. There's Play streets. There's all these different ways that we can create community. That's what the bite bus movement is about.
You're making me think about a tool I use in my work, Lego and Yeah. With Lego, when we do different activities, we discover that there are a lot of different [00:24:00] ways to make the same thing. If you instruct people with a certain set of Lego bricks to, for instance, build a tower, and you give them a couple of minutes to do it.
Even if you tell them that one particular element has to go on top, you are going to end up with so many different looks. It's fascinating how much variety there will be. That reminds me, there are a lot of ways to go about this, but at the end of the day, what you're talking about is the same elements.
You're talking about community, social cohesion, bringing people together, physical activity. Being outdoors, instilling in youth a sense of confidence.
And so the particulars of it don't really matter that much, and you can have so many different ways of organizing something like this. [00:25:00] I On bike, bus really catches people's attention. Mr. Beast calls it the purple cow effect. You see thousands of the cows. But if you see a purple cow, you're gonna be like, holy, that's a purple cow.
And I think Vice Boss has that effect when like you see it online and you can't unsee it. There's this PE teacher in East Hartford made a video inviting Justin Timberlake to join our bike Boss. It jumped. The algorithm, as they call it, you get placed in the bike bus, active transportation kids bubble, but it jumped to Justin Timberlake Sam's this PE teacher saw it and she's transformed.
She's getting kids bikes. She just did a grant at a bike education. She's leading it like once a month. It's incredible to see how she has taken it and revitalized her career. Yeah. [00:26:00] Sometimes you get complacent in teaching. You have your cake, your classroom, the lessons. You can have an awesome take and ing what you get paid for.
Sometimes you want to add topping. My personal topping is actual transportation, walking school, buses, bike bus, school street. It's been cool to see like all these other PE teachers being like, oh, I wanna add that topic to my cake and bring this to my students. I'd love to hear more about that. We've talked about how this has impacted communities and participants, how it's shifted thoughts about what's possible.
How has it impacted you, your career and overall life to have this be part of it? That's a great question. I love working with kids. I love being an educator. This has given me an opportunity to. Have a more base to lean [00:27:00] into the things that I'm passionate about. I still love to teach PE and work with kids.
This is just a different way of doing it. Being able to teach parents and help parents do this, I think is really important and powerful. If you can get parents out of their reading a bite bus, they're more likely to be able to empathize for. My student in Roxbury or the student that a more marginalized school, I think that helps everybody because we're all speaking up for the kids that aren't seen.
So you've really been able to branch out and expand what's possible for you through this, and you've also been able to satisfy that part of you that is very passionate about. Change about making our streets safer and more inclusive and our communities healthier. You are a community organizer. I hate to break [00:28:00] it to you, but that's a big part of who you are, and so I can see where if that part of you were not being satisfied, it would maybe feel frustrating.
Yeah, for sure. On the community organizer piece, my East Coast side can come out where I'm like very like combative. In terms of the advocating, what I found is if you focus on joy and community, it brings people over much easier. It's better for my mental health than knowing like every exchange is a fight.
If the bite bus movement did nothing to advocate for safer streets or better resources, we would still be more moving the needle more than we could imagine. People see the bike bus and they intuitively understand how it's important, why it's impactful, and that things need to change. How do you think you needed to get out of your own way in order to do what you're doing?
[00:29:00] Good question. My wife would have a great answer, balance. As a parent, you just have these like new algae. Having young kids and doing all of this, I think it really pushed on like having what appropriate balance is. And I had originally started to start the nonprofit earlier and things got crazier in a good way very quickly, and I was like.
I can't do this. This is too much. Things are out of balance. This is not gonna bode well. And the last thing I wanna do is impact my relationship with my wife, my kids. My job as the teacher that year, it was hard to just put things on pause and realize there's a limit to your capacity. But I think be able to regroup and lean into the whole new realm that.
I'm not super skilled at it. I've been a PE teacher my [00:30:00] whole life, so I'll go into running a nonprofit and having meetings and you're like, what is going on? And being uncomfortable and working through that. He gets better. I remember my first year of teaching and I was beating myself up and I was like, this is so hard.
I remember I almost quit midyear. Then each year it gets easier and I feel like at like my fifth or sixth year of teaching, I was like, man, I really was an awesome teacher my first year. I just didn't realize it. I feel like I'm always reminding myself, you don't know what you're doing perfectly right now, but you are every day trying to put your best foot forward.
And in five years you can be like, man, you did a really good job your first year. So not being too hard on yourself and focusing on progress. There's a great book called The Gap and the Gain, and they talk about focusing on the progress that's [00:31:00] already been made, and yes, acknowledging that there is still room for improvement, there is still work to be done.
Celebrating the wins on actually a daily basis, and so one of the recommendations I love from that book is to keep a nightly journal where you write down three wins from that day. It could be anything like I hydrated or I went for a nice walk. Then forecasting three wins for the next day, doing that every night.
Taking a few minutes to do that journaling. I've done it for months and it makes such a difference in feeling good about what you're accomplishing and keeping focused on what's important and what you want to achieve. I think that's a great idea. When I feel overwhelmed, I'll put together a wins list, what did I accomplish this year?
And then you go back and see what you accomplished and you're like, holy. I did a lot [00:32:00] like the Herculean feet. You go through the whole thing and you're like, I'm not doing enough. I'm not doing this. Yeah, Sam, sometimes it's okay to sit on the couch and scroll for a while, just 'cause you gotta decompress.
You're not a robot that can't always be working. You're trying to create a life that has balance where you're present with your kids and your wife when you get home from work. So this topic of balance is. Really important, and also this theme around rhythm and finding your flow. Listening in, when do you need rest?
When do you need to slow down? When do you need the alone time versus when do you feel like you need to be around other people? Could you talk a little bit about that listening in, that you have cultivated? I'm in a unique situation where my parents live close by. I work at my parents' house, so at the end [00:33:00] of the day I have an Apple Watch, so I can call and make texts, but I leave my phone with social media and email.
I leave it at my parents' house, and it's a game changer. It has been. Impactful. I've never had a drug addiction, but the feeling of wanting your phone and checking it is probably something you can feel that you're building more endurance to be away from it, and you start realizing, I feel so good not having it on me.
Self-control is really hard. Realize nothing's happening between 5:00 PM and nine in the morning that I need to be at my phone, but if my phone was with me, I'd be checking it. A hundred times. There's no message on social media, no email. More important than my children and family. I've noticed the phone is so addictive that I'll, get annoyed at my kids for pulling me away from the phone.
Beating yourself up doesn't do anything. You just have to [00:34:00] try to break up. A book I'm reading is How To Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price. Bought it at a local bookstore in Vermont. It is fascinating because our phones are highly addictive and many of us spend months or years staring at our phones, disengaged from what's around us, half paying attention not getting physical activity, indoors, checking email, social media, bank balance, news, whatever it might be.
It can really make us not aware of what we need or what's going on with those around us. This mindfulness, making intentional decisions, I am going to not have that device with me right now because I don't need to. It is actually going to create noise and distract me from the things and the people I really do want to focus on.
Sure, [00:35:00] and for me it's a blessing and a curse. So much of the success has been through social media and this tool to share great ideas, and it is an insane time suck. As a small business owner, yes, there are definitely things that I do need to be doing. Oftentimes it is on my phone. How do I say I'm putting it away or I'm turning it off.
Create some separation. It is something that we need to be very intentional about. Otherwise we'll just find ourselves glued to them. The rush of going viral, seeing your notifications and all the views go up is this rush you crave. You're like, how can I make another viral? Or, I had a viral video in a while, which is just so weird.
I feel like social media is a great way of writing. The awareness of bike bus, and I jokingly say not everybody resonates with a [00:36:00] mildly chubby East coast Buick guy, so I want more characters in the bike bus movement to share their stories, but I don't want them on their phones all the time. Just trying to figure out what works and what are ways to highlight other voices, written shows and why diverse group.
We get dopamine from likes, reactions, attention, the way that the phones are designed and the apps. It is tapping into those needs that we have to be seen and heard. It brings up some interesting things for me as a coach in terms of external validation and feedback. What are we looking for from outside of us?
And how to fill those needs in ways that are not dependent on these devices. My wife and I still have a device, but I feel like we're scaffolding back. I know we're not alone. We put the kids to bed, get into bed and send each other Instagram reels. And I think we've been [00:37:00] doing that for a while. And I was wanting to have a cell phone free bedroom.
My wife was like, let's get a TV for the bedroom. 'cause she had wanted that previously. I would've been like, no way. Now we absolutely love it. Sure, there's still another device, but we don't have our phones. We're engaging in the show together. Our phones are away. If I go downstairs after 8:00 PM even though I'm exhausted, I'm gonna be up for another four hours, but nothing productive is happening.
At 11, I start eating junk food, and then at midnight I'm like, why am I still awake? I was tired at 8:00 PM. It keeps me upstairs away from all that. I don't go to bed much earlier. My word of the year is scaffolding it. These gradual steps. It could be scaffolding and giving your kids independence, and it could be like scaffolding and having less social media or less phone.
It's interesting you bring up the phrase scaffolding, because I learned about that in the Lego Serious Play training that I was [00:38:00] part of to become a facilitator. It was a four day training in Mexico. The concept of scaffolding is big in Lego, serious play and relates to the bike bus. Things need to be sufficiently difficult for people to get into a state of flow to feel focused, but it can't be too difficult because then they give up, they feel frustrated, I can't do it, and so forth.
By providing scaffolding, it's that support that people need so that the activity feels just the right level of challenging. We use that in Lego serious play so that the activity is not too difficult, but it's difficult enough. Yeah, absolutely. The bike bus is great 'cause you have the range of skills, kids who are still learning, not training wheels, learning both slower in the back, kids that want to go faster in the front and you find a way to keep everybody together and we sometimes have longer breaks at like bigger crossing so we can all cross the green.
Also, I tell [00:39:00] my students, we're not robots. You don't just download how to do something and now you know how to throw a baseball or kick a soccer ball. You make a lot of mistakes when we were babies and you're laying down on your back and then you start finding your hands and your feet, and then you start rolling over, move one foot.
Then you start crawling and you push yourself up. You made millions of mistakes to learn how to walk. Mistakes are how to learn. But it's good to make mistakes. The thing that's great about the bike bus, it creates this environment that is safe enough where kids can mess up the bike. Bus creates safety in numbers.
It's the space where kids can have their wobbles and they can bump into each other. Learn spatial awareness and build confidence. You need the space that allows nowy to make mistakes, build confidence, biking in the street, the real world, going to functional places. Once you become more competent, you become more [00:40:00] competent, and you wanna do it more.
Those are important skills because as adults, we need to be able to be adaptable, to be resilient, to feel like we can make mistakes. Everything doesn't have to be perfect. Many workplaces do us a disservice because failure is not accepted, risk is not accepted. So these. Qualities that you're helping the children learn are gonna serve them well long term?
Yeah. If I can be that voice for parents, it's okay to take risks. Here are the things you need to do. So it's not total chaos. Play has inherent risks. Living in the world has risk. Just being on your computer has negative impacts. You need a certain amount of risk in your life, and we've really created this environment where it's.
You are a bad parent. Your kid has this bad experience. So often what shows up on social media or the news is just these [00:41:00] negative, bad, getting kidnapped stories when statistically it's not random strangers snatching up these kids and the white vans. It's like a family member, someone the kid knows. We exaggerate the risk of kids in the real world and hopefully we come back to reality.
This level of comfort with risk is important if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a community leader, if you're a parent, and yet, I see a lot of the time that people are very risk averse, really afraid to take any kind of actions, feeling stuck, feeling like they can't make a change because they might break something, they might ruin something, even though.
The status quo is not necessarily all that amazing. We don't ask parents who carpool if they have insurance or liability coverage. Everybody's do I need to ask the school the principal, if I [00:42:00] can do a bike bus? Would you ask the principal if you can carpool? No, absolutely not. You would just find another family carpool.
That's basically what we're doing, except we're not limited by the size of your car.
So in closing, thought we can keep going. No, we have no shortage of things to talk about. In closing, Sam, tell us about what you see coming up in the next few months or years. What's your vision or your plans? Plans, hopes, doubling, tripling down on the bike bus movement. You gotta find those communities and those individuals who wanna start it and make it easier for them.
If any listeners wanna donate, go to bike bus world.org. Email me at [email protected]. Be able to provide some basic things that help remove barriers for people to start a bike bus. We'll help grow. We have a global bike bus summit. Bike bus leaders come and get together. They started in [00:43:00] Barcelona, then it was in Germany last year in Worcester uk.
Excited to see it grow again next year in Lisbon. I think we're gonna bring it to the US the year after. Change does take time. So we're here for the long haul. We're not going away putting in systems and support to make it sustainable and scalable. It's just a matter of time till we hit that tipping point where this is the norm.
I used to think the goal over bike bus was for it to not exist that kids or communities have trials. The roads were safe and they have confidence, and now you don't need it. There's this social cohesion. But even in Amsterdam, the places that we think are super bike friendly and kids have in the back.
They still need bike buses. They still need support. People need joy in their day. Having a once a week group bike ride blasting fun music, I don't think that should ever go away, but the infrastructure [00:44:00] need to come to place so that it can be done on non bike bus days that kids do feel safe riding to school, to their friends' houses, to their jobs.
That relies on our leaders. Remove barriers. Absolutely. This is why you and I have been activists in Boston and in Portland and other places to help create conditions that are more conducive to people of all ages and abilities. Being able to get from point A to point B on a bicycle or walking and rolling, to put it in inclusive terms.
You mentioned Lisbon, so I'll share a quick story as we close out. A few years ago, I was going to Lisbon as a tourist. I reached out to Chris Brulet and learned from him about activists in Lisbon who were doing work around better biking and safer [00:45:00] streets. He connected me with some folks there. They met up with me, hooked me up with a bike.
And showed me around. We biked all over Lisbon. They showed me a new protected bike lanes, cycle tracks and everything that they had helped get created through their advocacy, through their organizing. It was quite a transformation over a few years. Then we joined a bike ride with, I think it was thousands of people.
It was a demonstration ride. In support of the protected infrastructure, which was being threatened by some folks in office. A lot of people turned out to show their support. That's my story about being a tourist activist in Lisbon. Love it. Thanks for being here, Sam. Keep up the good work. What you're doing is amazing.
It's bringing joy to so many people, not just those participating, but also those watching. I look forward to [00:46:00] our next conversation and seeing where this movement goes. Absolutely.
