Sunday, March 1, 2009

Updating

Ok, so the month of February has turned out to be busier than expected and every time I would get a minute to sit down and blog, it wouldn’t happen.

We had winter break just after Valentine’s Day, although it didn’t seem like much of a break as my grandparents came to visit, then I had two field trips over the course of the break. I learned that Applebees has good food to go and the couple times I’ve asked them to deliver it to the bus, they’ve acquiesced. All things considered, my life has been extremely busy.

Being a floater again is like walking on air. Yes I get the few kids that drive me nuts, but then I don’t have to see them again for at least another 2 weeks. My voice has remained intact and the stress level has decreased quite a bit. When I’m stressed, I’ve learned I lose my voice. Losing your voice on a busload of children is NOT a good thing.

There have been some changes up at the bus garage, starting with the field trips. I’ve now become an airline attendant before every field trip. We have to give a little speech about the proper fire escape procedures to some very rude and obnoxious children who insist on not paying attention. I keep tweaking my speech to include things I forgot to cover in the last group. The bus shop didn’t really give us any real guidelines, so I suppose it’s as long or short as the driver wants it to be. We’re also supposed to collect rosters from the schools prior to actually going on the trip. The coaches and teachers must have the rosters on the bus and must give us a copy. I actually like these new guidelines because it gives us a little more control over the situation, plus we actually know whom we are hauling to and from events.

I had a field trip on Friday taking the local 6th grade middle school kids to the movie theater. Yes, that’s right the movie theater. I had heard we were going to see Coraline, but we ended up seeing Ink Heart. I don’t know WHAT the educational value of each of these movies is, but it wasted 3 hours on a Friday. Ink Heart was actually a decent movie starring Brendan Frasier and a few other unknown people. The premise of the movie was somewhat interesting and completely engulfed in fantasy. Again, I question the educational value. This is the time of year we typically get a lot of the “stupid” field trips that have little or no education behind them.

Overall, it’s been a good month and hopefully I’ll be able to blog more in March.
In Like A Lion,
The Bus Driver

3 comments:

ChiTown Girl said...

Great to hear your month has been relatively calm. I've been wondering what you've been up to :)

Pissedoffteacher said...

Welcome back, you were missed.

JudyL said...

Speaking of field trips, what qualifications do your drivers need other than the obvious in order to do trips. What I mean is, are NEW drivers allowed to do trips? Or do you require that they work for your District for a period of time first to become familiar with the buses, roadways, night driving and emergencies that might come up on a trip?