Walton Central School students have built a range of bicycles with unique designs in their transportation class this school year.
Salvatore Salvia, the technology education teacher at Walton Central School, said he started teaching the class a couple of years ago, which he piloted the concept for on a smaller scale as part of a broader curriculum in 2012.
Salvia said he accumulated bicycles throughout the summers that people discarded and built a rack to store the bikes in the classroom for students to choose from.
The first thing students did was take the bikes apart to put them back together. Salvia said he told the students they could make changes to the bikes’ designs, like stretching the bike frame, changing the tires or extending the forks, which connects the front wheel to the frame.
When he was a kid, Salvia said, he never got a new bike, and that his father would give him a pile of bicycles to put a bike together instead.
“I really liked that, and I can always remember that I did that, and I thought kids would like it, too,” Salvia said. “I just figured I would give it a try.”
Salvia said 22 students were enrolled in his transportation class this year, which was divided into two sections.
“It worked really well,” Salvia said. “I thought the kids enjoyed it. Some kids take it more serious than others. Overall, it was fun.”
The students enjoyed seeing the final culmination of their work, he said. Salvia said many of them liked painting the bikes as well.
They studied the different parts of a bicycle and how they work in class, he said. Students could build a custom bike or do a restoration, taking a bike apart to make it work again.
A lot of the bikes were in bad shape at the start of the class, Salvia said, many of which had bent rims or frozen chains.
“They learned basically how to take a piece of junk apart and make it work,” Salvia said.
He added that the class is 20 weeks long, and this year’s sections began meeting in September. The students enrolled in the class represented grades 9-12.
This year, many students wanted to make a three-wheel bike, and others sought to build a tandem bike, which are built for two people, Salvia said. Some students took the bike apart, repainted it and then put it back together. One student made a bicycle motocross with a 20-inch wheel designed to suit a bigger person because he was very tall, he added.
Some of the kids used three bicycles to build one bike, Salvia said. Students additionally were allowed to bring bikes in from home, some of which were restored as gifts for family members. Every student, however, was provided a bike at school.
Parker MacGibbon, a student who has Down syndrome, worked on a three-wheel bike that was donated to the school. Salvia said MacGibbon rides the bike around at school in the hallways.
“That was the only bike he was able to ride, so it worked really good for him,” Salvia said.
Aside from the transportation class, Salvia said, he also teaches classes like construction and manufacturing. The district used to have two technology teachers, but after one position was cut, he took on additional classes.
Salvia plans to retire at the end of the school year, after 32 years working in Walton. He said there is no guarantee the class will continue after he departs, but he has enjoyed bringing it to the classroom.
He said he is retiring to “pass the torch on,” adding that there are new ways of doing things today he might not be as familiar with.
“They are very creative,” Salvia said. “They have great ideas. I always learn new things from the kids because they teach me things. Even though I feel like I know a lot of things, I still learn from them. It has been a pleasure to work with them.”