April 5/18: Child Psychology Experiment Gone BADLY Wrong:
As of my first year of driving, I have worked diligently to find kind and creative ways to help kids who have trouble remembering to stay seated, seated. My first solution was to hand over a roll of that nasty brown industrial paper towel and a pen to a student to let him draw me some pictures. That has evolved into great and inspirational galleries of artwork over the years, all happily painter's taped to the ceiling of the bus.
Today, the current art gallery is still out of commission and so to appease the children, I bought a small bucket (sixteen pieces) of sidewalk chalk, some crayons and some paper plates. What could possibly go wrong?! I have the best (155) kids ever!!!
Despite the fact that it took literally seconds for my grade sevens and eights to turn into four year olds, I felt that the first three schools did very well with just the chalk and I ought to go out and buy more chalk, right away!!! By the time I got my fourth school home, I had actual four year olds who had turned into chalk dust bunnies and I was humbly apologizing to parents. One kid looked like he was literally bathing in chalk dust and another not far behind!
"Chalk on the seats and crayons on the paper!", I hollered over and over again to my last school. I was happy to hear some of the children passing along the critical information. "Is this chalk?"... "no, that's crayon!" The bus had turned into a chalknado!!! :O Chalk drawings everywhere! Thankfully and impressively, it was all G-rated (yes, I was afraid of otherwise), but within the fifteen minutes that it took to get my last school home, there were also some dreadful tears and almost need for opened windows, regardless of the snowflakes outside the bus.
The only win of the day - I have never ever seen such big smiles on the bus, either!
Unfortunately, this will never ever happen again. Lessons learned (the hard way). Please do not try this at home, we are trained professionals (now seeking therapy!) LOL! :D
Nov. 12/16: Crazy hair day, just one of many ways being an "Artful Driver" is fun!