I love this! I hope you and your class have a great time and they end up feeling positive and ready for the school year.

I sometime use the bike analogy when talking about learning but with a slightly different point to to it. One of the best ways to empower students (of all abilities and ages) is to help them understand how to break a difficult task into its key skills so they can learn those. In this case if learning to ride a bike is hard, we can learn to balance first, then learn to pedal later.

I'll be adding some of your thoughts on empowerment next time I use it. Thanks for the inspiration.