Looked like two 10 year old boys were going to get into on the bus this morning. It was getting ugly fast and there is only so much you can do while driving.
Luckily, a VERY loud from me 'OK, that's it you two, I'm singing and you're going to sit down and enjoy it'
To which I broke out into 'I'll stand by you' in the most horrific singing voice known.
That worked, all the kids started laughing and I continued on till everyone settled down and one of the boys joined in the chorus.
I have little doubt the one kid likely deserved a 'smack' from the other kid, but a bus full little kids wasn't the place for it.
I'm happy God has graced me with no shame. Fortunately I believe the kids think my singing voice was 'fake', it weren't...
Looked like two 10 year old boys were going to get into on the bus this morning. It was getting ugly fast and there is only so much you can do while driving.
Luckily, a VERY loud from me 'OK, that's it you two, I'm singing and you're going to sit down and enjoy it'
To which I broke out into 'I'll stand by you' in the most horrific singing voice known.
That worked, all the kids started laughing and I continued on till everyone settled down and one of the boys joined in the chorus.
I have little doubt the one kid likely deserved a 'smack' from the other kid, but a bus full little kids wasn't the place for it.
I'm happy God has graced me with no shame. Fortunately I believe the kids think my singing voice was 'fake', it weren't...
I can well remember a fight I had when I was a kid that an adult stopped. I was in 7th grade and had a "friend" that lived down the street. He had this kid a grade ahead of us that lived by him and he was friends with him too but the friend of my friend always wanted to act like a smartass to me. He got to telling me how he could kick my ass one day at school and I laughed it off. So I'm sitting at home with my family eating dinner after school and these two turds show up at my front door wanting to see me. Mom comes and gets me, not knowing what's up. I go to the front door and they're smirking and shixt. I tell them I'll meet them back on the next steet over at some duplexes with big yards. I was enraged that they'd come to my home, especially the one who was my friend. I biked over there got off the bike and whipped the older kid's ass thoroughly. Another even older kid, two or three years older and much bigger than me, who lived across the street, wanders over and is watching me put it to this guy. I was on top and beating the shixt out of him. All of a sudden the older kid kicks me square in the face, knocking me off and nearly out. It was a sucker move totally and the other kid did it purely for sadism. He exclaimed he thought I was gonna kill the kid.
A guy came out of the duplex and said, "okay, that's enough, it was a fair fight 'til this big kid butted in, now y'all get off my property and go home,".
I was basically outnumbered three-to-one with one of them almost a grown man. Needless to say I was no longer friends with the kid in my class after that. Thanks to the guy who stopped it, because when you've been "sucker-kicked" and are then outnumbered, things look grim.
Classy move, Steelie. Couple more times and the kids will be stopping any fights themselves due to the fear of it invoking the dreaded Bus Driver Sing-A-Long!
Actually used this exact tactic with my kids when they were little and acting up in the back seat. Never really needed to threaten to pull the car over, saying that I'd switch the station to country and starting singing along was enough to shut them down every time. Hee hee..
Well, I'm running down the road Tryin' to loosen my load I've got seven women on my mind Four that wanna own me Two that wanna stone me One says she's a friend of mine
Take it eeeeeasy Take it eeeee-eee-eee-sy Don't let the sound of your own wheels Drive you craaaaaaaazy
I'm thinking the Rodeo Song! They won't be able to wait to perform it at school. "It's 40 below and I give a fcuk. I got a heater in my truck and I'm off to the rodeo!"
Well, I'm running down the road Tryin' to loosen my load I've got seven women on my mind Four that wanna own me Two that wanna stone me One says she's a friend of mine
Take it eeeeeasy Take it eeeee-eee-eee-sy Don't let the sound of your own wheels Drive you craaaaaaaazy
I'll never hear that the same way again after Bacala died while listening to it.
Folks who ain't done it commonly underestimate the complex set of skills needed to operate a school bus.
I quit driving when they wanted to do random blood pressure checks and then insist you take medication if you were what they thought was over. That and the fact that they started to charge the usual $50 an hour for the bus even if you drove it yourself (used to be $0.65 a mile if I drove myself, and a school bus is the PERFECT vehicle to haul a bunch of kids and camping gear).
What always got me was traffic lights. Empty, a school bus practically stops on a dime. Fill it with 40 high school kids and its a whole diff'rent ballgame. A light could turn yellow a ways out and it would STILL be all you could do to stop before it turned red.
My route is 30 (well it's 9 miles to my first stop, so it's 21'ish with kids aboard) miles and not a single stoplight the entire route. Brakes are air brakes, which helps a bunch.
My bus also has air conditioning, which is also a STRONG motivational tool.
Indeed, matter of fact me and another teacher hauled thirty kids to the coast just last weekend. Seven hours total on the bus, no air conditioning..... but on the innerstate with the windows down it ain't so bad.
Beside no A/C, for years school buses had unsynchronized manual transmissions; lots of double-clutching and gear-grinding on them old monsters. Driving it in town you'd spend so much time wrestling with the transmission rather than watching the road and the kids that I always felt it was a major safety issue.
Got mixed feelings about giving it up, but driving just on field trips maybe five-six times a year I never did drive enough to get really good at it and from the driver's seat on them longer buses it seems like that back end just goes on forever.
Once up in Fredericksburg on a field trip I was backing a bus around in a McDonald's parking lot while the kids ate. This old farmer passing by in a pickup suddenly starts honking his horn. I hit the brakes and looked all irritated at him, he just looked back at me like I was retarded.
I looked back to reverse some more and I was like two inches from taking out a streetlight pole in front of the kids, some parents and a couple of other teachers. Don't think I ever would have lived that down.
I was going to link Roger Miller's Kansas City Star song but something is haywire with my computer and I am not getting any sound and I did not want to link until I listened. It is one of my favorites by Roger. miles
And yes the volume is turned up, some other glitch.
I don't think there is such a thing as a bad Roger Miller song. And everyone of them is easy to sing. Dad used to sing King of the Road all the time and we always sang along. That's probably my favorite.
I have the Pre-K kids sit in the first row, but do try to bring up the 'bad' kids. Truth is, there ain't a bad kid in the group. They are all kids being kids and it's hard to blame them for that.
It is an interesting dynamic having kids from 4 to 17 on one bus.
