I can tell when you're lying...

One thing about working with kids, they're always telling on each other. This holds true on the school bus as well, however, since you also have the distraction of THE ROAD to deal with, it can be difficult to tell who is lying and who is telling the truth.

When one student starts to tell on another, I usually just ignore it or pretend that I can't hear them and they always move on fairly quickly.

The other afternoon, I hear "bus driver, Jacob is spitting"

Not wanting to clean up spit, I say "Jacob quit spitting"
Jacob says "I'm not spitting"
Not quite sure who to believe, I say "Jacob, I can tell when you're lying"
Quick as a rabbit Jacob shoots back "well I'm putting it back in my mouth"

All I could do was shake my head.

Mean Bus Driver...

Sometimes a route will open up during the middle of the year. This is not common, but it does happen. Most drivers I work with do NOT like to change routes in the middle of the year. For this reason, a route with considerably more hours than my own reached me in the seniority list... I said yes.

With that one little word "yes" it was suddenly my last day with "my kids", the kids I've loved for the past 4 years, the kids who have come to love me. I was a bit sad... ok, a lot sad.

The next morning, I jumped on a new bus and set out on a new journey.

Two days later, two days of yelling "HEY, sit down" and yelling "sit down" and have I mentioned yelling "sit down"... two days later, a group of kids has formed around my seat.

Little girl... Are you our bus driver for the rest of the year?
Me... yup
Little girl... Are you nice?
Me... nope
Little girl... dang

He's looking at me...

Driving a ton of little kids means dealing with little kid nuances. For three days in a row, I dealt with "Miss Tee, he's looking at me" "well she's looking at me". For three entire days I suffered through this nonsense. On the fourth day, first thing in the morning I hear it again...

"Miss Tee, he's looking at me"

I say "both of you need to look out the window".

Silence... finally. I was pretty proud of myself! On the way home, they start back up and I tell them to look out the window. This time it works for about 15 minutes... ay ay ay. In a moment of brillance, I say "well, stick your tongue out at him". An 11 year old girl is sitting behind me and says "um Miss Tee, I don't think you're supposed to encourage that". I say "yeah, probably not, but when he looks at her and she sticks out her tongue, he'll say 'she's sticking her tongue out at me' to which I'll reply 'well quit looking at her' " problem solved...

Open mouth, Insert foot...

It's a school bus. There's going to be fights. 

During my first year driving, there was what I'll call a "semi-fight" on my bus. Actually, it wasn't really even a fight, let me paint the picture...

First, let me say that our school is a predominately white school district. If I had to venture a guess, I'd guess 85-90 percent (or more) white student population. Out of 80+ kids who regularly ride my bus, I can count on one hand the number of children that are a race other than and/or mixed with white.

During my first year driving, a middle school "instigator" is messing with a high school student. I'm driving and paying more attention to the road than the kids (it WAS my first year) so I yell "KNOCK IT OFF" and I continue driving. All of a sudden the middle school boy is in the front seat crying. I ask him what's wrong... no reply. I tell him that if he doesn't tell me what is wrong, I can't fix it. He proceeds to tell me the high school student hit him in the face. I stop the bus and try to sort this out. Through stories given by other students with the part I saw, I concur that the high school student had his head down listening to his headphones. The middle school student was "bopping" him on the head, and bopping him, and bopping him. Having had enough, the high school student said to quit as he swung his hand up to stop the kid from bopping him in the head, the middle school boy had leaned over the seat and got hit in the face.

As the driver, I choose the punishment. I chose to put the high school student in one front seat for a week and the middle school student in the other front seat for a week.

Within a day, I'm in my supervisors office... (now let me say the high school student was white and the middle school student was a mixed race). So, within a day, I'm in my supervisors office. Turns out I had a fight on my bus and it was due to race. Um no. I had one student picking at another and ended up getting hit when the other student tried to stop him. Well, the guardian of the middle school student was mad that his grandchild got beat up on the bus because he was "x" race. 

To keep a long story from getting longer, it turned out that I had to write up both students and the school took over punishment. 

Fast forward a couple weeks. I'm driving the middle school boys basket ball team to their game. I like watching basket ball so I go in and sit in the bleachers. I'm the bus driver, so I'm the first one there and I pick my spot. Soon enough, parents are piling in the bleachers and I have people to talk to. This gentleman is sitting next to me and we're chatting about the ability of the middle school players, you know, "this one is good at that... that one is good at this". About halfway through the last game of the first set of kids, the gentleman starts complaining about the middle school principal. I smile and nod and am sure to say nothing... I know my opinion on that matter should never be heard by parents. So after complaining about the principal, he moves on to complain about administration, and he eventually starts complaining about the bus driver of his child. It takes me all of 2 seconds to realize his kid rides MY bus. Shoot. Do I stop him? Do I politely move? What do I do? :) I let him talk...

He proceeds to tell me the above story... with tons of extras added in. It ended up being a big blow out involving the whole bus fighting and punching and kicking the "x" raced students while the driver did nothing. It sounded to be truly a big ordeal. Except, I was there, and it was not.

So he quickly moves his conversation back to the students. Within seconds, he asks me which of the 7th grade boys are mine. I say none of them. He asks which of the 8th grade boys are mine. I say none of them. He looks at me blankly for a moment then says "you're Jason's bus driver, aren't you?" I smile as I say "yup".

Talk about putting your foot in your mouth...

There's no such thing...

I try very hard to NOT listen to every conversation going on in the bus. In fact, I tune most all of it out, listening, of course for "key" words. The other morning, there's a 7 year old boy in the seat behind me and an 8 year old girl in the seat across from him. They're talking about Sponge Bob, so I listen...

7 year old boy... "unh uhh.. because the squid on Sponge Bob, he had a mustache on his forehead"

8 year old girl... "yes, there is too such a thing as a unibrow"

7 year old boy... "NO there is not"

8 year old girl... "I'm telling you, yes there is"

7 year old boy... "Miss Tee, there's no such thing as a unibrow, is there"

me... "well, some people have extra long eyebrows and they touch in the middle, and that's what people call a unibrow"

7 year old boy thinks for a second while rubbing the space between his eyebrows, then responds... "well, if I had one, I'd shave it, so there really is no such thing".

How can you argue with that!!!

Back to work...

Well, it turns out my blog went on maternity leave right along with me! We're back now...

So I go back to work and find out that the orange who was my sub was pretty much a tool! I'm proud to say it took me all of about 10 minutes to regain order. It's amazing what kids will do when they know what to expect... clear rules + clear expectations = order, peace, and harmony (for the most part).

My first morning back, I was a teeny bit nervous about my tricky turn arounds, a teeny tiny bit.

It's dark'thirty, I have about 10 kids on, and I approach my first one... the blind one. I pull up, flip on my hazard lights, take a deep breath and proceed to turn around like a pro! As I continue on, Bobby comes up and says "Mr. Orange didn't do it like that, he did it like this..." (and he tells me how Mr. Orange incorrectly navigated the turn around). Without missing a beat, my mouth shot out "well, not everyone is as good at turning around as I am" :)

The afternoon comes and we're rolling. About 15 minutes after we leave the school I realize I have had it up to here with "Mr. Orange did this" and "Mr. Orange did that" yeah well it's my bus and I do it the right way! Then my little favorite pipes up (what, everybody has favorites)
"and you know what else Mr. Orange did Miss Tee..." dang, not him too,
"what did he do Cory?"
"He would always tell jokes and then laugh at himself, and you know what I would say?"
"What would you say?"
"I'd say that's not funny Orange, that's not funny Orange..."
"Cory, you crack me up!"
And for the next six miles, Cory continue to recite 'that's not funny Orange, that's not funny Orange'. I knew there was a reason he was my favorite!

Maternity leave...

I am officially on maternity leave until 6 weeks after this little one decides to make his arrival. I was having contractions within 20 minutes of getting on the bus every single day. I'm almost 34 weeks so doc decided to take me off.

It has eased up the contractions, so they were definitely caused by the bus.

This means I'll be reflecting on some old stories for a little while :)

And a funny... so the "orange" that is driving for me while I'm gone... I'm told he called in to the mechanics because he had a flat dual. This is a super full bus with tons of kids and when the bus is not moving, the natives get restless. So they're sitting there waiting for the mechanic to bring out a spare bus so they can get on their way. They're now about 30 minutes behind when the mechanic gets there with the spare and starts loading the kids off my bus and onto the spare. One of the high school kids (the one who told me this story) sees the mechanic walk up to the driver and sees him shake his head, then he over hears the mechanic say, in a sarcastic tone, "you don't have a flat" lol and the mechanic talks loudly and tells the kids to get back on the regular bus. I asked the student telling me the story "didn't the driver get out and check" and he said NO - can you believe that he didn't even get out of the bus to check if he had a flat. Turned out they were at a stop and approached by a clearly drunk man and told they had a flat... and the "orange" just took for granted that the drunk was right!!???!??!!

Way to make a bus load of kids really respect you... freaking oranges.