I rarely watch the news, but I happened to see the first news story after watching American Idol tonight 🙂 It was about a bus driver who threw a six-year old girl to the floor because she was standing up in the bus. We can see in the video that he yelled a few things to her after she sat down about her not listening and how dangerous that was for her to be standing up while he was driving. This is a conflicting situation because on one hand, he shouldn’t have been abusive with her at all, but he is also in a difficult position to be controlling students while he was driving the bus.
Transportation to and from school isn’t something that we have had a lot of experience with as teachers. As students, many of us have had to take it especially if you lived outside of the community. I’m not familiar with what kind of training bus driver have. Does anybody know? I find it ironic that we as teachers deal with just as many students in our classrooms as bus drivers do everyday on their bus routes. Should we expect them to deal with disciplining the passengers and controlling them if they misbehave? And all this while they are driving as well. Bus drivers don’t have the same experience with children as we do, and we can’t expect them to know the best “management skills” that we incorporate with our students.
I am in no way taking the side of the bus driver in this situation. What he did was uncalled for and him resigning was a good move. There happened to be a surveillance camera on the bus. This makes me wonder, what about all the buses that don’t have cameras? There could be a lot of scary stories happening on school buses that aren’t talked about. Does anybody have any ideas for avoiding situations like these? Another interesting discussion topic is: Should bus drivers be given some type of behavior management training?
Please read the news story here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504784_162-20038483-10391705.html
Celeste's Blog 
Comments on: "Aggressive bus driver" (2)
Wow.. that is shocking. There is no excuse for the bus drivers actions. Perhaps bus drivers should go for a “behavioral management” course, for some people don’t have the common sense to deal with situations such as we just saw! On another note, perhaps seat belts should be implemented in buses. However, a similar problem may occur for how can one ensure students are following proper bus procedures?
That’s a very interesting questions Brittney. I think that it could be mandatory to have surveillance cameras on all buses like I said to be a witness if a situation does arise. Also, students could sign contracts at the beginning of the school year that would show their intent on respecting all bus procedures.