The Lesson: Remembering what's important in teaching and learning

Isaac with the torch work

Over the past several months I had the honor of teaching/mentoring this young guy through the process of making a bicycle frame. It was a middle school project he had to complete in order to graduate.

He rocked it, and this coming year he's heading on to high school. Hopefully not before taking the summer to put a bunch of miles on his new bike!

If you’d like to read more about the mentoring process, please click the link below. And if you’d like to hear other stories from me in the future, please subscribe to my Substack account.

The Lesson by Cycles by Joseph Ahearne

Remembering what's important in teaching and learning

Read on Substack

June 15, 2025
As an update, Isaac officially graduated yesterday. This past week all the students in his class had a presentation day to show off their projects and discuss what it was like, what they learned, and to thank their mentors. The mentors were invited to say a few words about it as well.
It was amazing seeing all the different projects these young people did. One young woman created, choreographed, and put on a dance performance; another wrote lyrics and guitar music which they performed and recorded. A young man sourced local wood and shaped a beautiful surfboard, and another built and wired a set of speakers. Each project was amazing, and the whole event gave me hope for the future. These young people are so inspiring.

A huge thanks to Metropolis Cycles for their help in finishing out the assembly and dialing in Isaac’s bike. You folks are the best.

As always, thank you for reading and supporting!

A job well done

Frame Building Class Complete

Students & Their Hand Built Frames

My second frame building class at UBI is finished. My first post-class impression is that it went really well. Everybody came away with a frame they built with their own hands and they all seemed really pleased with what they’d accomplished. I haven’t taught enough classes to know if this is going to happen to me, personally, every time, but I feel fairly attached to this group. We spent a lot of time together over the past two weeks. We’ve gone through it together, you know -- it's kind of like childbirth -- and I’ve watched as they’ve struggled to grasp a huge load of new information and then translate this into a tangible, useful machine. It requires not only a sustained level of concentration that most people aren’t accustomed to, but also the physical practice of transforming ideas into steal using heat and tools in ways that most of these people hadn’t ever done before. It can be stressful, and it’s really tiring. Two weeks is a long time to intently focus your attention on any new subject, and this group was awesome. And they did it. They worked it out and built their frames and I think each of them had a good experience doing it.

Full Size Frame Drawing

For myself, I learned some things about the process of teaching, and feel like I became a little better at breaking down the steps of building a bike frame into bite-sized portions so that others can follow along. There are some parts of the process that I want to focus on and improve, and there are always things that I can learn about how to present such a large amount of information in a way that doesn’t put people to sleep or stress them out and mire them in so many possibilities that it immobilizes their brains. This really happens, and people seem especially susceptible in the afternoon, an hour or so after lunch when food is still heavy and soporiferous, and their minds and hands have been active since early in the morning. There were a couple of times when I prattled on about some bike this-&-that and saw people’s eyes spiral off into a sort of semi-conscious open-eyed state that reminds one of zombies or the severely damaged, and I had to stop talking and snap my fingers in front of their eyes, send them back to their work benches to move around, file, slot and burn more steel to stay awake. 

The "Classroom"

Teaching is an art form unto itself. Group psychology and all that. I feel like I did a decent job of it, and I enjoy it, and want to keep doing it. There’s a lot to learn from each class, and I’m going to work to refine what I do and how I do it. Just like anything, I guess. It really makes me respect those people I’ve come across in my life who’ve had that special ability to teach, to share ideas in a way that invites people to learn. 

I want to thank each of you who were in my class for putting up with me and for sticking it out and building yourselves a bike. That’s really something to be proud of. I won’t name you all here, but each of you did a great job. Here below are a few more photos of the class. And yes, coming very soon is the video…