Knight
“I walked to elementary school every day. It’s hard to believe it now, but I had to cross a highway to get there,” my doctor said during a recent visit. “Amazing.”
As a couple of certified elders, we were optioning the privilege of engaging in a “how things were different back when I was a kid” conversation. Both of us, it turns out, grew up in small towns where the local elementary was close to our homes. Mine down the street; his across the highway. (Or, at least, as he comes to think of it, a very busy street.) Still, it was not considered anything but normal to be sent off alone to navigate the route to school. It was simply the way things were done.
He was raised in southern Indiana while I spent my early elementary years in Greenwood. I would dawdle mornings and afternoons the three blocks to and from Central Elementary, a sturdy brick building from the turn of the century. Walking was the way one got to most places, unless one had a bike — which this one didn’t. At some point, I was outfitted with a bright yellow raincoat with a hood and black rubber boots with metal clasps. I, along with my classmates, hung ours in the cloakroom. I hope someone still makes those coats and boots.
My wife Becky remembers that she was a lieutenant in the crossing patrol at Anderson’s Park Place Elementary. Patrol members were in charge of making sure the students got safely across the streets. Participants would report by yelling, “On duty!” or “Off duty.” Again, no adults seemed to be around. It was assumed the kids could handle it.
The summer before my fifth-grade year, I moved from Greenwood to a housing addition built in an area of mostly farmland. All but a handful of kids in the school system rode yellow school buses which meant I would be riding one, too. My previous knowledge of school buses had come from storybooks and television. I was excited.
And riding a school bus was exciting, so was talking and laughing with my new neighborhood friends. But soon, as with so much of life, it became normal. Waiting at the bus stop was a novel experience, as well. Dark mornings or cold rain or drifting snow presented their own challenges. Thinking back, I suppose I could frame these memories as providing lessons about stoic endurance.
As a school teacher, my relationship with school transportation changed. Most teachers were assigned bus duty. Morning duty, afternoon duty and occasionally both. I never minded bus duty and I think the administration knew it, so I did several tours of duty.
I liked morning duty because I could be obnoxiously cheerful to the not-quite-awake students getting off the bus. I acted overly excited about the beauty of the day. “What a gorgeous morning! Don’t you just love this cold rain? So refreshing!” I would smile. Evidence shows a student’s first few minutes of contact with school can color his or her entire day. My strategy was cheerful overkill, Dad humor, or whatever it would take to elicit a positive smile. Much of the time it worked, at least with middle schoolers.
At some point in my teaching career, I began noticing parents in cars lining up early in the mornings and afternoons dropping off or picking up their children rather than putting them on the bus. This situation is quite common these days. Not sure of the reasons why this is so. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says students are about 70 times more likely to get to school safely when taking a bus — the most regulated vehicle on the road — rather than traveling by car. Hmm. Curious. Something else must be going on.
And speaking of curious, the NHSTA also doesn’t “require” but “recommends” buses be painted “National School Bus Glossy Yellow.” Who knew NSBGY was a color? I wonder if there is a specific name for the yellow of those plastic raincoats I used to wear?
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
