“Stand up if you think you’ll be the first to be seen,” Julie Churchman told a class of Santa Barbara second-graders sitting before her on the playground.

A handful stood up. Their brightly colored shirts, the Adams School physical education teacher explained, made them more visible to passing cars.

“Five years ago, I was teaching a second-grade class just like this one,” she recalled, “and for some reason I started talking about biking, and the kids …”

Churchman jogged over to some students who had gotten a little too bold and gave a brief, impromptu safety lesson.

“I think I literally asked them, ‘How many of you guys know how to ride a bike?’” she said. “About half the class raised their hand. And that for me — it was just like click. I need to bring biking to this school.”

Since then, the bicycle program has expanded to the first through sixth grades from just the second grade, and when the students return from spring break Monday, the kindergarteners will take to riding as well.

At the program’s outset, Churchman surveyed each grade and discovered that about 50 percent of students at every grade level didn’t know how to ride a bike, she said.

“There was just never that opportunity for them to learn,” she said.

At the end of this past year, however, 95 percent of her first-graders could ride, she said, as well as 100 percent of her third-graders at the school at 2701 Las Positas Road in Santa Barbara’s Samarkand neighborhood.

The school’s fleet — which ranges from tiny, pedal-less balance bikes for the kindergarteners to 24-inch mountain bikes for fifth- and sixth-graders — was provided by a wide circle of local donors.

Bici Centro — SB Bike’s workshop and store — donated the original refurbished wheels, the children’s bicycling program CYCLE Kids donated mountain bikes, and the Santa Barbara-based Audacious Foundation purchased a new fleet for the school.

The efficacy and potential of school-run bike lessons came into especially clear focus for Churchman when Safe Routes to Schools, a biking education and advocacy program, visited Adams School the year after she launched her biking regimen.

“We probably taught 10 kids how to ride a bike that day — just one day,” she said. “They had the balance, they just had never been exposed.”

Lessons often commence like a driver’s education class — one scaled down to the level of a primary school student with only two wheels to operate.

Churchman goes over hand signals, safety precautions and even nutrition. After having their helmets checked, the kids take to the playground just to ride.

The sessions often end with practice riding in a straight line, which is a simulation of the sidewalks and bike lanes the students will encounter beyond the walls of the school.

In addition to exercise, Churchman said, gesturing toward the couple of dozen second-graders weaving around the blacktop, biking comes down to fun and freedom.

“It’s a different feeling than walking or being carried or being in a car,” she said. “For the first time, they get to go fast, they get to go far, and they get to go wherever they want.

“I think that, hopefully, some of these kids will go, ‘Oh, you know what, I like this so much, I want to ride my bike to school, I want to ride my bike to work. I want to make this a big part of my life.’ It’s been a big part of my life. I’m hoping to pass that torch to them — get them involved in just enjoying riding a bike — for fun, for transportation, for being a kid.”

— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.