I have been a bus driver since late 2006. I know the inside story, the scoop, the down low dirt of what it takes to be a bus driver, how to handle kids and adults, and how to survive on the "streets" so to speak. I used to have a blog, feel free to browse it or ask me a question here.
I can't say for sure the reason why the driver did not detour, however, maybe she was unfamiliar with the area, or perhaps she had been told not to deviate from the route. Sometimes there is no space for a bus to turn and detour and sometimes the detour areas only accommodate cars, and not buses.
Well first, you did a good thing by calling the secretary of your school. The thing I would recommend would be calling the bus shop secretary and see if it has been turned in there. If the bus is the same, then you can look in the seat you were sitting in, and hopefully the game will still be there. However, a likely outcome is that someone else picked up your video game and has not turned it in. I'm sad to say that many students are not honest and you have probably lost the game. I hope you are able to recover it and get it back. Good luck!
Personally, I like assigning seats because then each child knows they have a place to sit. A downside to assigned seats is having random children that do not normally ride the route get on a bus with a pass because they are going home with a friend/cousin/to grandmas. In my experience as a substitute, the drivers who have assigned seats on their buses tend to have calmer buses overall. The kids are less likely to act up and the ones that try to are quickly ratted out by other students who enjoy following the rules. Bus drivers do have the right to assign seats, and if I am on a bus and experiencing problems, I will assign seats to the children the day that I drive. It can cause problems with parents, but if I know where their kid sits, there is no fighting whether their kid misbehaved because their child sits in the same seat every day.
You said it yourself. You should not have been standing up in the first place. Did your bus driver warn you about standing up while the bus was moving? You also assume it was a brake check, but maybe he really did see an obstacle in the road that would have required quick decisive action. As for the legality of it, technically no. If the driver can be proved to have illegally "brake checked" the bus in order to get a student to sit down, then there can be trouble. That being said:
SIT DOWN!
As for your question - could it have waited until you got off at your stop? Could it have waited until the bus driver was NOT driving, but instead sitting at your school? Ask yourself these questions.
Border Patrol Agent
Do you ever feel sorry for the illegals you catch trying to cross the border?Call Center Representative
Are you allowed to hang up on a caller if they're being very rude?SWAT Team Commander (Retired)
How much protection do those bomb disposal suits really provide?
First off, a bus driver should not be laying hands or any part of body on a child unless it is necessary for intervention. For example, I had two 2nd thru 4th grade girls decide to get into it on the bus and both decided to swing punches. I stepped in the middle and separated both girls, took one gently by the wrist and moved her from the other girl and had a lady who was riding on the bus with me sit WITH the second girl in the same seat (with the girl near the window) until we got to the girls stop.
If in fact, this bus driver is displaying questionable behavior, you can request that the bus company pull the tape to address the problem. The bus company can view the tape and subsequently discipline the driver should there be an issue. That being said, it may be possible that the bus driver is assigning seats for each kid and it could be perhaps that your child does not like the new rule change. I've never heard of a driver that sits ON a child. Hope this helps.
Honestly, if anything, I feel that the bullying problem seems to have gotten worse or at least more apparent. There are alot of anti-bullying media campaigns out there because there is an increased awareness of the problem. The issue now is more the bullies who blatantly bully in plain sight. Bullying can take many forms, some obvious, and some very subtle. The thing that has to happen in order for the bullying problem to decrease is for the consequence for bullying be something that the bullies actively dislike. If they don't like the consequence, they will not bully as much. The problem we have in school is that the consequences really have no effect on students that bully. For a student who is a good student, rarely gets into trouble, a lunch detention or losing their recess is a big thing and enough of a deterrent to have them avoid getting into trouble because that student's parents are often active within the school and actively take part in their child's education. If that student faces a consequence for misbehavior at school, it is likely that the same student will face similar consequences at home to show the student that the behavior in question will not be tolerated. A bully or someone who is constantly in trouble for other reasons, really doesn't care much about the school consequence because when they get home, the parents may be absent or simply not care to follow it up at home.
Thats not to say that there are exceptions to that assumption, but those children who lack discipline at home will invariably be in trouble at school for misbehavior. Some parents believe it is the school systems job to raise their child to be an upstanding citizen.
Hiyas Rootin!
I don't mind when talkitive children sit closer to the front and ask me questions. Sometimes, it can get a bit annoying especially when I'm trying to pay attention to driving in stressful situations, but usually a simple, "Please be quiet for a few minutes, kiddo." usually helps and then the kid does not feel like I am ignoring them. I have many kids ask me if they can open the manual door when we are at a stop. I usually tell them that I will let them open the door at their stops. Some of the older students like to sit up front and chat with me and often will tell me things that are annoying them or upsetting them and ask me for advice.
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