On Friday, Scott Riebel read to his fourth-grade class the final pages of “Mick Harte was Here,” a novel about a 12-year-old boy who dies of a head injury, the result of a bicycle accident. The book is narrated by the boy’s sister: “The doctor said that just an inch of Styrofoam would have made the difference between his living and dying.”
In the novel, Mick rejects wearing his bike helmet because it wasn’t cool, “because it made him look like a dork.”
“But what makes something cool?” Riebel asked his class. “When I think of why something becomes cool, it’s because lots of people are doing it. … Now, what if we could be the ones who got lots of people to [wear bike helmets] and then it could become cool?” “Yeah,” said one boy. “We could be famous,” sighed another. “Think about if we could be the group that made wearing helmets cool,” said Riebel. “Think about that.”
At the end of the lesson, Riebel joined Thrive Allen County’s program director Damaris Kunkler, who arrived to the school with heaping sacks full of bicycle helmets, which the two passed out for free to the surprise of the entire class. Thrive was awarded a grant from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, part of which was used for the purchase of the helmets.
