CyclingSavvy

CyclingSavvy is a relatively new education program that has its roots in central Florida. Some of us in the bicycle education community have been noticing the results the CS folks get, along with dribs and drabs about their teaching philosophies and how the classes work to empower cyclists. I keep hearing and reading good things about the program, and how it teaches people to be part of traffic instead of being afraid of traffic.

A month or so ago, I learned that there was to be a CyclingSavvy class close enough to home to make the logistics of taking it workable. Four of us went to take this class to experience for ourselves what makes it so much better than the TS101 class we have all been teaching.

While I consider the experience as being overall positive, I have mixed emotions about the weekend.

It comes down to thinking in terms of a) what I learned from the class itself, b) what a relative neophyte student would learn from such a class, c) what I learned about the teaching methodologies, and d) how I feel about the instructors' personal styles.

What did I learn about cycling from this class? As far as class content, not much. This was as I expected, although I was hoping to find more tools for that toolbox. I did have some long-time training challenged with regard to lane choice as exiting intersections, and need to do a bit more research along that line (it's possible that what I had been taught is in error, for example, although there were things said by instructors that I also challenge as exhibitions of selective revisionism).

What would a prospective student that lacks my teaching experience learn? TONS. I know long-time cyclists who would benefit greatly from taking this class. Of course, I know a lot of long-time cyclists who think they already know all they need to know, and who would refuse to learn anything from this class if they did take it. Compared to the TS101 curriculum, it's decidedly better. The stepped success into more challenging or complex situations works quite well. Many of us learn to deal with new hurdles best when we feel good about the last hurdle we jumped, and this class is structured with that in mind.

What did I learn about the teaching methods? This was my major reason for taking this class. I really wanted to think about how this material--much of which is already familiar ground for me--is taught differently than I have been teaching it, the better to evaluate whether I want to bring Cycling Savvy to Louisville. I had to consider some of this carefully, as teaching styles vary from person to person enough that it was tough to see what differences were core to the course and which were more personal in nature. CyclingSavvy as a class is somewhat proprietary, despite that much of the curriculum is based on best practices that are widely known in segments of the cycling community. The CS folks don't post their electronic presentation online, for an assortment of good reasons, although the Truth and Techniques session includes a lot of video that is already available online. I knew something of the strategy employed for the "Tour of (insert city name)," but wanted to see how it worked in practice. I like it. I think the extra time involved compared to other methods is inevitable if the goal is to get folks to ride a featured trip segment for themselves rather than just having them "follow the leader" without thinking about it. In many ways, I think this is (for me, at least) the core positive difference from TS101, and much of the rest of the class is a build-up for success in the road segment by necessity.

As for instructors' personal styles, there were some troubling points. I believe both to be competent instructors, despite that one has far less experience teaching this class. I am sure that, with some practice, the less-experienced instructor will do quite well. Having to practice my own teaching spiels has led to great improvement for me over the last few years--I'm a far better teacher than I once was, although still no "SuperDuck" teacher. The more experienced teacher must have been having a bad weekend. There was some egregious rudeness to students and her co-instructor that raised quite a few eyebrows during the weekend. There was a demonstration that was, in the opinions of several, poorly-conceived and poorly explained beforehand.

None of this, of course, addresses the weather we experienced in Columbus, as that was clearly not the doings of CyclingSavvy. If you had not heard, Columbus had some severe weather Friday evening (the storm also affected folks farther east, including a relative in Richmond Virginia), and tens or hundreds of thousands are without electricity as I type this. Many are being told to not expect electrical power to be restored until late this week or some time next week. A lot of trees broke, not a few fell, and there was much damage to the electrical grid. We saw dozens of trucks from out-of-state utility companies heading north, presumably being driven by folks going to help rebuild the power system. Aside from a bit of time spent in the shelter of a convenience store, the storm had little effect on our weekend--we were quite fortunate.

We also missed the worst of the traffic nightmare that was loosed on I-71 once the NASCAR Sprint Cup race was over!