Steve Davis has more than 60 middle school students making bicycles, and that has won them a statewide award.

Davis, a counselor at Seven Hills School, teaches kids how to repair bicycles so they can give them away. People donate old bikes to the Bicycle Recycle Project, and sixth- through eighth-graders take them apart - "all the way down to the ball-bearings," Davis said - clean them up, and put them back together.

On Nov. 23, the three "Bicycle Recycle" classes expect to be able to give about 50 reconstituted bicycles to Loaves & Fishes in Sacramento to give to homeless people.

The program won a Golden Bell Award from the California School Boards Association.

"Bikes open up the world to them considerably," Davis said about the homeless.

Using a grant of several thousand dollars from the Governor's Office of Service and Volunteerism, Davis bought new fixtures for the bikes, including baskets, water bottles and locks.

"Homeless people need a lock, or they will get stolen from them," Davis said.

The project started in a janitor's closet six years ago, Davis said. Then the workshop moved into a room at the school.

This year, the Bicycle Recycle Project operates in a new wing of the school, with rows of cleaned wheels hanging from the ceiling according to size, and tools hanging from pegboard cupboards on the walls.

"This is a mess, compared to what it's going to be," Davis said, looking at unopened boxes stacked around the room. "I value things being in order and in place, and that's what I'm teaching students."

Davis swears he has the best job in the world.

"I consider myself the luckiest guy in the world," he said. "I get to work with kids and work with bikes."

His students seem to consider themselves pretty lucky as well.

"This is the funnest part of the whole day," said a breathless Cory George, panting after running to the bicycle repair shop.

Davis first heard about a bicycle-rebuilding project in Tucson, Ariz., then attended a two-week United Bicycle Institute in Oregon to learn how to teach kids to use tools to build bikes.

He was struck by the hands-on aspect of rebuilding bicycles.

"It's all with the hands," Davis noted. "No computers, no e-mail."

Students spend the first month just learning how to use tools and take apart bikes. By mid-October, students seem like old hands, placing bikes on a work rack and choosing tools to tighten bolts.

At the "go" signal, sixth-grader George grabs a Peugeot he's been working on and starts to repair the brakes. "And shifters," he explained.

Rick Musa worked with fellow sixth-graders Rich Vitamanti and Joey Young repairing a bike.

Under the gaze of Eddy Perez, the boys explain how they picked out a tire with an oversized tread.

"We're looking at the buoyancy of the tire," Vitamanti explained, giving the tire a spin and studying it from behind. "We're going to be the first ones done!"