Tag: school

Pop Culture, Rants, Suburban, Teacher

A Tale of Two Buses – Fight or Flight

suburbanprincessteacher

Who’s driving the bus?

 Back in June of this year, Karen Huff Klein, a 68-year-old bus monitor from New   York, was caught on tape being harassed by the middle school students on her bus. These kids were vicious. They insulted her, swore at her, poked her, and threatened her.  Throughout it all, Ms. Klein sat in her seat and took the abuse. She kept her back to the kids and stoically looked out the window. When a video of the incident went viral on YouTube, a sympathetic Canadian man set up a donation fund called, Give Karen H. Klein a Vacation! People sent in money in droves to support this poor grandmotherly woman. When Karen was finally presented with her cheque it was for a whopping $700,000.

Fast forward to November. Halifax bus driver Heather Vidito is caught on tape breaking up a fight between two teenage boys. The video starts with the two boys pounding on each other in their seats, while the bus is moving. They eventually end up rolling around on top of each other in the aisle. You can hear the bus driver yelling at them to stop, along with the voices of the other kids urging them on. The bus driver handles the situation quickly and profanely. She drops the f-bomb a few times and tells one kid to move his ass to the front. The fight ends within seconds of her arrival and the bus is back on the road in less than a minute. She never touches the kids. This video also went viral and quickly caught the eye of Stock Transportation (her employer) and the school board. Within 24 hours, the bus driver was fired. The kids who were pounding on each other and cursing at the bus driver were “disciplined” according to the “code of conduct”. This usually means a maximum sentence of a 5-day vacation suspension. And these kids have the satisfaction of knowing they got their bus driver fired. That’s a lot of power for a kid who doesn’t even shave yet.

So, let’s compare.

If you let some snot nosed kids push you around and treat you like crap, you might get sympathy and affection (and in Karen’s case, a huge whack of cash.) But if you actually stick up for yourself and do your job, you could get fired.

Now, don’t get me wrong. You can’t have adults swearing willy-nilly at kids. You have to have some professional decorum. But the bus driver’s job is to keep ALL of the children on the bus safe as they travel from school to home and back again. What if one of those squabbling prepubescent monsters, or an innocent “by-sitter” got seriously hurt while the bus driver was politely asking them to stop their shenanigans and take their seats, please? Can you imagine the outcry?

On the other side of the coin, while my heart goes out to Karen Klein, I think some job training would have been in order.  As I watched the video, I wondered what her actual duties as a “bus monitor” were? If she couldn’t protect herself, how could she protect others? Was she actually keeping the other kids (the ones not acting like devil spawn) safe? The behaviour of the bullies was unacceptable, to say the least. It was outrageous and they should have to walk to school from now until they graduate…both ways…uphill…in a snowstorm.

Both of these women were in desperate need of some on-the-job training. How do you deal with kids who are fighting, belittling, cursing and swearing? Sitting quietly and taking the abuse doesn’t help anyone, while cursing and swearing at kids is unacceptable. Employers need to get on the ball here and help staff deal with these out of control kids.

Meanwhile, if I had to choose, I would rather my kids travel on a bus with someone who can stand up to bullies and, when necessary, kick some ass (figuratively speaking, of course). I would hope she could keep the f-bomb as part of her inside voice but if it happened to slip out in a moment of crisis, I might be willing to look the other way.

By all means, Stock should discipline Heather Vidito. But fire her? That’s just f-ing ridiculous.

Memoir, Pop Culture, Princess, Teacher

“OMG – What are those things?!” – Why teachers should always preview the class movie.

suburbanprincessteacher

I popped the DVD in the machine and turned out the lights.

“Is everybody ready?” I asked.

The kids had moved all of the desks to the back of the room and pulled their chairs to the front. Some were less than a foot away from the big screen TV I had managed to snag from the AV room.

“Move out of the way, Josh. I can’t see!” one of the girls yelled.

“Move your own chair,” Josh said. “What? You got a piano tied to your butt?”

Josh’s friends laughed.

“OK, enough,” I said. “Remember. I can turn this off anytime. I need you to cooperate with me. I have to finish these reading assessments by the end of the day and the only way I’m going to do that is if you all watch the movie and eat your snack and be quiet. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah,” they all grumbled.

‘This movie is called Babies. It’s about one year in the life four babies. One is from Mongolia, one is from Namibia, one is from San Francisco and the other one is from Tokyo. You can see how babies are raised in ways that are very different from here.”

“Have you seen it, Mrs. H?” one boy asked.

My heart stopped a little bit. No, I hadn’t. I had meant to preview it during the week but other things kept bumping it off my to-do list.  I figured: it’s an award winning documentary, rated G…what could possibly go wrong? It’s rated G, for heavens sake. Most of these kids had already seen movies that I still couldn’t watch for fear of nightmares.

“No, I haven’t but it has won a ton of awards and I think it will be great. You will learn about babies for health class and about different countries for social studies. Two birds with one stone! Hooray! Now, when I call your name, I need you to join me in the hall for your reading assessment. It will only take a few minutes and then you’ll be right back at the movie. OK?”

“Yes. We promise,” said the one girl who might have actually been listening to me. The rest of them were trading snacks, whispering to the friends, and moving their chairs to get a better view.

I hit play and called the first name on my alphabetical list.

“Ryan, my friend. You are first.”

Two chairs were set up in the hall perfectly so that I could see the class (but not the movie) and they could see me but not the reader. It was a delicate balance of supervision and assessment and doing these two things at once was challenging, to say the least. It would be a wonder if I didn’t have a split personality by the end of the day.

Ryan read his piece smoothly and quickly, while the rest of the class was immersed in their snacks and the movie. One down, 29 to go.

“Katie!”

“Robert!”

I had six students done when the buzzing started.

“What is that?”

“What is she doing?”

“Is that a…?”

“Oh my God! That’s her boob!”

The class went crazy.

“No way!” somebody shouted.

“Yes, look at it. It’s huge! It’s bigger than that baby’s whole head.”

“Oh my god. That’s sooo gross.”

The giggling had reached a peak and could be heard in the hall and beyond.

I dropped my clipboard of reading scores and raced into the room. The student I was reading with somehow made it there ahead of me.

Sure enough, there was the Nambian mother, completely topless, feeding her baby. Her heavy breasts hung almost to the ground and two babies were simultaneously sucking on them and playing with them.

And then, as quickly as it started, it was over. The film moved back to the California baby demurely drinking formula from a bottle fed to her by her father. I paused the movie and considered my options.

“Nooo! Turn it back on!”

“Don’t stop the movie just for that, Mrs. H! It’s no big deal. It’s natural, right?”

If I stopped the movie now, there would be no way I would finish the reading assessments by the weekend. And besides, they were right. Breastfeeding is natural and there was nothing gratuitous about the scene.  Next year they would all get the “sex talk” despite the fact that some of them still played with dolls and action figures.

“Do you think you can handle this maturely, boys and girls?” I asked, pretending like I trusted them to act more mature than my husband would if he were watching the same movie.

“We promise!”

“Pinky swear!”

So, I turned the movie back on, crossed my fingers, and called the next name.

The lesson I learned that day? Well, that previewing a movie before showing it to 30 ten-year-olds is not just a “good” idea, it’s essential. I was lucky it was just a little boob on display. Amazingly, I didn’t get any flack over the movie. I don’t know if the kids just didn’t tell their parents or if the parents agreed with me that it wouldn’t hurt them but I know I lucked out. So, do yourself a favour and watch the movie first and if you see boob or hear cursing, you might want to put it aside and find yourself a new electronic babysitter. Just a tip.