Strength, Courage and tons’O Potential

This post isn’t about a free bike for any of you, it’s a post about potential and change. In the alternate school world, many students have extended periods of time where they don’t attend school for a million and one reasons. Not all have the strength and courage to return after this “break”, but lucky for us we have a student that showed this resiliency. When we were showing some bikes that could be a project for someone else or their own project, our student picked a scraped up BMX and set to work. She spent a lot of effort to remove the stickers, sanded it down and did an awesome job painting it a gorgeous black. This was the easy part, no bike repair stuff going on. Then she learned how to put the crank back into the frame, how to install tires (which she got really good at…there’s a story behind that), work on brakes and attaching handlebars. What was interesting was that she REALLY wanted to finish it yesterday. After a bit of talking and working, it came out that she was going to ride her bike to meet some friends and family at the reconciliation event at the PNE . It wasn’t until today when I was looking at the spot where her bike usually was, that I realized how AMAZING this was. This young lady internally set her goal without announcing it to the world, and quietly went about it and made sure she achieved it. I see SO much potential!!!!