Popcorn

On Friday afternoons the elementary school gives the students popcorn. I don’t know why, it may be a fund raiser. Anyway, many of the riders get on the bus with popcorn. I have made it clear that I don’t want them to get into the popcorn on the bus because yours truly has to clean up the mess. As we all know, no one can enjoy popcorn without making a mess. They know they are not to eat popcorn on the bus. Do you think that stops them? Some of them view this as a challenge to see if they can eat it without getting caught. At any rate, there are always a few that I suspect have been eating popcorn and as they get off the bus I ask them. “Have you been eating popcorn?" The ones who answer me honestly I let them off with a mild admonishment along with a request not to do it again. However, there are always a few that don’t admit to eating popcorn and for some reason that upsets me more than the fact that they eat it. I can see it in their teeth as they lie to me about eating it. (Is that called lying through their teeth?) I’m going to have to think about how to address the honesty/trust issue with them. First I will ask myself if the issue is worth taking on. Is it my place to teach the students about honesty and integrity? Perhaps I should get over the popcorn already.

It gets contagious

Isn’t it amazing how things can be suddenly contagious? For example, on the school bus today one student got on and immediately began coughing. She was coughing so much that I asked her if she was going to be OK and was about to ask her if she wanted to go back home when she volunteered that she just had a cough and didn’t feel bad enough to stay home from school. You can’t get any more subjective than that. Any way, less than a minute later I heard another student start coughing, then another. Pretty soon it felt like I was driving a hospital bus to the whooping cough ward. Then a girl came forward and wanted to know if I could circle back around to her house because she remembered that she forgot to unplug her hair straightening iron and she didn’t want her house to burn down around her sleeping mother. Well, we wouldn’t want to wake up her mother so I granted her request. While she was in the house a boy remembered that he forgot to let out the dog at his house and he didn’t want his brother to get blamed for it. I didn’t bother trying to get to the bottom of that. Fortunately stopping at his house didn’t require a detour, only another stop. And how do you differentiate the relative importance between a mother and a brother while driving a school bus. I half expected to get further requests to revisit other student’s homes because this was getting almost as contagious as the coughing did earlier. I was spared further requests however and we proceeded on with everyone yawning as I dropped them off at school.

Self Esteem

Many school age children have self esteem issues. It just seems to come with the territory. School bus drivers are in a very unique position to impact that. A kind word, a compliment, or merely just paying attention to a student can and often does inflate their sense of self. As it is commonly understood that the majority of behavioral issues with students can be traced to low self esteem, it follows that if we can improve their self image then perhaps behavior will improve as a consequence. It is certainly worth a try.

'I will use my quiet voice on the bus'

The elementary students were especially loud going home today. I made several attempts to quiet them down but these were only temporarily successful. I even stopped the bus once and addressed them as a group, threatening to assign seats if the raucous behavior continued. In the end I identified about a dozen of the worst offenders and as they exited the bus I assigned them ten sentences each. They are to write ‘I will use my quiet voice on the bus.’ Two protested that they were not the ones making all the noise but that is to be expected. The others accepted their assignment without comment. I will get the sentences back from a minority the next day. The others will run the assignment up to twenty or even thirty sentences, as ten more are added each day they are delinquent.

Don't turn the apple cart

Establish a routine and try not to deviate from that too much. Don’t vary the route as that creates excitement and anxiety, neither of which is conducive to good behavior on the bus. Practice maintaining an even predictable demeanor. Accept the fact that just driving the bus is hard enough and establish routines that tend to keep the students calm. The calmer they are the better behaved they will tend to be. A bus full of students is no place to upset the apple cart.

Racing for the bus

On my elementary route, many of the students group together in the morning to wait for the bus to arrive. As they see the bus approaching sometimes they have a tendency to start racing each other to see who can get on first. If allowed to persist it gets to be a competitive thing. When students do this it is advisable to stop the bus well before any of the students reach it and then wait there for the rest of the kids walk to where the bus is stopped. Advise them as they get on that running toward the bus while it is still rolling is strictly forbidden, focusing primarily on the biggest offenders.

Be a courteous school bus driver

School sites are busy places. There are lots of pedestrians, cars and other busses to contend with. A good rule of thumb is to be extra courteous and give others the benefit of the doubt. Keep in mind that most everyone is in a hurry and many are already late. You will find that in time your courtesies will be returned. This reciprocal courtesy exchange will help to maintain a civil and perhaps even pleasant atmosphere. School bus drivers are in the best position to establish those behavioral patterns. The parents will notice, the students who are driving will notice, the pedestrians will notice and the students on your bus will notice. You may not think your bus students are paying attention but they observe much more than they let on.

Rome wasn't built in a day

Learn to roll with it; some of it anyway. Pick your battles. Live to fight another day. Just think, is this a hill I want to die on? One of my student passengers was telling me that his mother was a bus driver for a short time. She eventually gave it up and was quoted by her son as saying, “Those kids on that bus give me a headache.” My guess is she wasn’t rolling enough and was picking too many battles. Rome wasn’t built in a day and modifying behavior on a school bus won’t happen in a day either. Be patient. They will be back. Bet on it.

Know when to say when

Consider letting the students regulate the windows. It is widely known that one of the greatest producers of stress is a feeling of lack of control. Stressed students are too often unruly students. They know when they are hot or cold better than you do. Of course if they develop a habit of throwing things out the windows then all bets are off.

Don’t let them ride with their feet and legs in the aisle. In addition to being a safety issue it gives them access to more students with whom to create opportunities for foolishness. The less foolishness you have on the bus the better off everyone will be. Don’t let them ride backwards. Same issue with safety but additionally it is much more difficult for you to communicate either verbally or with mirror signals to students when all you can see in the mirror is the back of their head.