Kids On Bikes

For the last three years I've been teaching 10th grade. I love it. While I do miss teaching seniors and the troubles they run into, I've really enjoyed returning to 10th. But I have one major issue with the tenth grade curriculum. There's no novel on it. There's plenty of short stories, two plays and two memoirs. They're very good but I feel like the lack of a novel is a little harmful. So I set out to fit one in. Last year I did lit circles. That went well enough but I felt like I had to try something new this year. One of my present students made a suggested that we do some Stephen King. I liked the sound of that but I wasn't sure which King novel would work in a tenth grade class. In the same class another students suggested STAND BY ME, which is based on the Stephen King novella THE BODY. It was a genius suggestion and I ran with it. I had my students read the novella.

I did it as a complete independent reading for the most part. I had to make some adjustments mid-unit because there's a lot of content in the novella that's probably not appropriate for high school sophomores. For a final assessment I did something definitely outside the box. They had just finished taking the NYS English Regents and I didn't want to just assign an essay, so instead I decided to do some creative writing. Students were to create a 1 to 2 page "pitch"(essentially a hybrid synopsis/query) for a "kids on bikes" adventure story, be it a novel or a streaming show. Talking to students at the end of year, many said it was their favorite thing we'd done all year. 

What is "kids on bikes" you ask? This article does a stupendous job of breaking it down. Better than I could ever do. Go read it. I'll wait. 

I had never heard of the trope/genre until December of last year. Of course I knew what it was but I didn't have a label for it until I hear it for the first time. I've also seen it labeled as "free range children." I don't remember what exactly pushed it into my awareness. It might have been something I saw on Twitter or it might have been something related to the episode "Stand by Gene" of BOB'S BURGERS, it might even go back as far as last summer when, during an afternoon excursion to a local watering hole, I had a conversation about "boy on a quest" stories with some of my buddies. All I know is that I became obsessed with these stories. And THE BODY was one such story. 

These were the stories I grew up with. THE GOONIES . E.T. STAND BY ME. NOW AND THEN. IT. DANDELION WINE. ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? (There's an argument to make that Stephen King, as he is with so many things, is the master of this trope/genre.) Not to mention more contemporary plays on the trope like ATTACK THE BLOCK, SUPER 8, STRANGER THINGS, THE PAPER GIRLS and the aforementioned "Stand by Gene" (in fact most Gene-centric episodes of BOB'S BURGERS fall under this trope and are often send-ups of previously mentioned works). They were the stories I lived, tooling around the neighborhood on bikes. It's how we got around, it's how our adventures started and finished: a pile of bikes scattered on someone's front lawn. 

Trope codifiers. 

As part of the unit, I literally taught the "kids on bikes" trope to help the students organize their pitches. I created a graphic organizer then modeled how to fill it out. Once I finished the outline, I modeled how to write the pitch. Then something happened. The pitch I created grabbed me and I decided to write it. I told my students and then promised them that I would print and bind a copy of the book for each of them. 

After a few stops and starts, the project got its claws in me and I took off writing it. It was a departure for me. I really tried to write an upper MG/lower YA kind of book filled with thrilling heroics and adolescent mischief. I used Save The Cat and the guidelines suggested by the article to structure the novel. It all just came together and I started rolling. I finished it in early May. I was pretty excited. My students, on the other hand, were mostly indifferent. I let it sit for a month and took a look it again, tightening up the opening a little bit and polishing it up. It's pretty good. But I never bound it for my students because I was afraid my fragile ego wouldn't be able to handle seeing it in the recycling bin or just left behind on desks. It's a decision I already regret because I had several students expressed their disappointment that I didn't make copies of the book.