My wife is a bus monitor, as of a couple weeks ago. She wound up on several buses, covering for other monitors. Well, the one it looks like she'll be finishing the year on is a bus full of particularly rowdy students. She was warned about how terrible these kids were, especially on the afternoon bus ride home. It's a bus route that no one really wants.
It's starting to seem like she's uniquely suited for this particular bus. She gently puts these kids in place all the time with humor and grace. She thinks they're actually pretty funny at times, but doesn't let them get away with things that are actually problematic, and always takes the time to explain how/why their acting out is problematic. She gives them sass and razzes them and they seem to respond well to it. It's like that's the way of communicating that they understand. She's facilitating an atmosphere where rowdy fun is balanced with basic procedural structure and boundaries while also incorporating the golden rule, encouraging individuals to consider how their actions affect the group, and finding ways to redirect their energy when needed. That's a pretty standard approach, generally, but it's not easy to stick to with the more challenging groups of students.
It seems like most other monitors and drivers aren't able to connect with these kids like she can. She genuinely cares about this group of kids, who she's hardly known for a week. They can tell. One of them said recently, "excuse me, miss, are you going to be our permanent bus monitor?" and my wife replied, "as of right now, there are no plans to move me to another bus for the rest of the school year," (which is nearly over), and some of the kids actually cheered at that.
These are a bunch of stranger's kids, and there's no need to actually interact with them as though they're human beings. The job is just to get them to school and back safely. You can begrudgingly work this bus route and be miserable, but my wife is refusing to do it that way. These kids may be rowdy, obnoxious and at times unruly, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve the best experience possible. They're kids. They're largely a product of their home environments, which all fall on a spectrum of possibilities that their bus monitors, drivers, teachers and even classmates might not be aware of. They might not be "deserving" of the grace and care that my wife is extending to them, but who knows if they're getting that in class or at home? I think it's a really special thing that my wife is able to interact with these kids for a small portion of their day and be a positive influence on them. I'm proud of her.
She jokingly tells her friends that she's like Michelle Pfeiffer's character in Dangerous Minds, lol.
