A few rambling thoughts about my school bus and Dimwit Donnie

This week I began year number ten of driving a school bus.  What began as a side gig a few years ago to make a few bucks has become something I genuinely love to do, and something I will try to continue doing long after I retire from church work.  My middle school kids are usually hilarious, sometimes horrifying...but I am grateful for each one.  My bus may be one of the most culturally and racially diverse groups of people you'll ever find.  About half of my kids are white, while the other half is equally divided into kids of Hispanic, Black, and Asian descent.  There are times whether I wonder whether all of them are 'legal', and I think about the coming day in which some masked ICE thug decides he wants to drag one of them off my bus for the crime of being brought to America, land of the free and home of the brave.  I've come to the realization that I will offer myself up for arrest in their place, not as some moral hero but simply because I'd want somebody else to do for the same for one of my children.  

Tonight I was mowing the yard and I was thinking a lot about how well our Dear Leader might do driving a school bus.  Can you imagine that whiny and thin-skinned dope and how he'd deal with 60 unruly middle schoolers?  They would tear him apart.  10 minutes on a bus with those kids and Trump would be screaming about how he is going to sue them or deport them.  I doubt he could finish a route without them making such fun of him that he runs off the bus crying and saying how unfair everything is.  

Kids can be cruel and mean sometimes...that's what they are, just as that's what we were at that age.  We found the tiniest little thing to get under an authority figure's skin and we just picked and burrowed and poked and prodded until some of them broke.  Many of them, who were not so concerned with letting a 12-year-old determine their self worth, let us run ourselves out, loving us the whole time while slowly teaching us the important lessons of life.  Those who couldn't do these things didn't stay as teachers or youth ministers or anybody who dealt with kids for very long, usually running away screaming after a year or two.  The rest stuck around, grew a pair, and realized that God had put them in this thankless job and so they might as well try to find the humor in it all.

Occasionally I might meet somebody new and when they ask me what I do I tell them that I'm a minister for a small church and a bus driver.  They almost never want to acknowledge the first, but the second thing will usually provoke a response of 'Oh, I could never do that!'.  Yeah, they're right.  They couldn't.  But I would love to see the world's worst egotistical blowhard try.  In his mind he'd be better at it than everybody.  But his failure would be worth almost any price to watch.  

Teaching the Bible in Public Schools, a Cirriculum Discussion Guide

There's been a lot of talk recently about certain states wanting to introduce the Bible into school cirriculums.  I grew up in Oklahoma, and the state superintendent of schools has decreed that Bibles (originally the New King James Bible, endorsed by none other than the current President-Election and also including the Constitution and Declaration of Independence) be placed in classrooms and instruction be offered about said Bibles.  This has caused a lot of angst amongst those in our increasingly post-Christendom world because of the demand for separation of church and state; it's also brought angst amongst even many Christians because what happens if little Timmy is told by his atheist teacher that everything in the Bible is just a pious fairy tale?  

I've never taught in schools and have no idea how to organize a cirriculum program, but as one who has two graduate degrees in religion as well as almost 30 years of church ministry, I thought I'd take a shot in putting together a discussion guide for schools about various topics on a middle-to-high school level.  It's not all-inclusive, of course, but there's a few Biblical items that demand discussion and I'm certain wouldn't cause any problem for my more conservative friends.  

Wealth and Prosperity.  

-Jesus of Nazareth tells a rich man to sell all he has and give to the poor (cf. Mark 10:21, Luke 18:22, Matthew 19:21).  Questions for class discussion: If we think of ourselves as a Christian nation, how best do we enact this as government policy?  What is the proper upper wage to begin mandatory enforcement of this Biblical rule? 

Foreigners

-The laws of the Old Testament continually speak of the need to love the sojourners (foreigners).  They must not be oppressed (Exodus 22:21), they must be loved (Deuteronomy 10:19), and as workers they must be fairly treated (Deuteronomy 24:14).  Questions for class discussion: How do we properly respond to political leaders who call all sojourners amongst us 'vermin', demand their deportation, and spread rumors about how they eat common house pets?  

Divorce

-Marriage and divorce are common social problems today, and were known by Jesus and his disciples.  Jesus was very strict about divoce, going so far as to say that to divorce a spouse and remarry is adultery (cf. Mark 10:11-12).  Questions for class discussion: What should we do with political leaders who have broken these commands?  Would it be possible to remove them from public office, especially if they have broken these commands multiple times?  

Sexual Assault (for high school honors classes only!)

-Deuteronomy 22:25-29 speaks to two instances of sexual assault; one outcome has the rapist put to death, while the other has the rapist responsible for the financial and social well-being of his victim the rest of his life.  Questions for class discussion: Given that many of our national leaders have been proven in court or in ethics investigations to be pedophiles, guilty of sexual assault, or simply horrible past behavior, how best should we follow clear Biblical teaching about them?  Should we kill them publicly as an example of our righteousness?  Or should it be more privately done to reduce their families' guilt?  Give clear reasoning for your answer.  

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I have no doubt that the God-honoring, Bible thumping conservatives in our country will be all in favor of my cirriculum, so once it begins being implemented I'll work on the other topics.  But for now this should keep everyone busy...

Why Not Drive A Bus?

Yesterday I was in another town and I saw on the side of a school bus an advertisement begging people to come be bus drivers.  Since I already am a bus driver and have been now for almost 7 years, I know something as to why a lot of people don't want to become a driver.  Every district is hiring, but there never seem to be enough to go around.  And since the purpose of this blog is to get stuff out of my head, I thought I'd list out some of the reasons why there are never enough bus drivers.  

1)Imagine a job that you arrrive at before dawn but don't get done with until late afternoon.  But you only get paid for 3-4 hours of work.  There's a reason I tell people that it can be a great second job if your first job is flexible.  But it can really suck if you don't have that...and most people don't.

2)Most jobs work and pay for 250 days.  Bus drivers, because of the school year, only work about 180 days.  This is OK if it's not your prime source of income or like a lot of days off.  But if you need to work like 99% of the population, this is sub-optimal.

3)School districts, even the wealthy ones, don't want to pay bus drivers as it is not one of their core prcoesses.  If they wanted to pay us what the market really bears, we'd make a lot...but if I wanted to go drive for private industry and be a unionized delivery driver, I could likely make twice what I'm being paid now (and work full-time as well). 

4)Bus drivers have to have a Commercial Drivers' License (CDL), and they are not easy to get.  I have multiple endorsements (student, passenger, air brakes) on top of the license as well.  DMVs don't make it easy to pass the test, and since we have random drug tests, bi-annual physicals, and can easily lose our license for various infractions, it's not always easy to keep them for some people. 

5)This coming week I will be out in the dark starting my bus in temperatures in the teens.  This comes only a few weeks after doing afternoon routes in 100+ temperatures on buses that are not air conditioned.  Not only is this not the most comfortable thing in the world, for people with certain health conditions this can be dangerous. 

6)Oh, speaking of working conditions, my old school district has most of its routes on terribly maintained dirt roads that went from being extra dusty to extra soaked.  As a rookie driver I got stuck in the mud multiple times.  But what is worse is the daily vibration of those roads, which I think took some years off of my life.  

7)Even on good roads, the buses we drive are not all that reliable.  When they are being shaken apart by bad roads, it feels like it's a daily gamble to drive and hope that something does break off it.  I've driven several types and brands of buses over the year, and the one thing that they all have in common is that if they were regular car brands they would be considered lemons; the breakdown rates on these buses is astronomical.  Occasionally somebody I will hear somebody say they want to buy an old school bus and fix it up.  I always tell them that this is stupid...not only are you buying a 25-year old vehicle that has been abused (and probably not well-maintained in the past five years due to budget issues), it was probably not well-built to begin with. 

8)Then there's the problem of driving a semi-sized vehicle through small neighborhoods, trying to squeeze through cars parked on both sides of the road and vehicles pulling out in front of me and children running out into the street.  A colleague of mine hit and killed a child who had done such a thing several months ago.  This driver was at fault in no way...but the guilt she feels will stay with her the rest of her life.

9)Ah, the kids.  When I tell people what I do most people say, "Oh, I couldn't do that!"  Yep, you probably couldn't.  Everyday on my current route I drive 50 hyperactive middle school kids (main ingredients: snark, anxiety, hormones, and energy drinks) to and from school.  Now that I've driven them for awhile and have gotten to know them I know most of them are OK.  But kids, even good ones, by nature will test adult authority.  And that's why a lot of adults can't do this, because they are too insecure in themselves to have a hundred eyes on them at all times.  Once you built relationships and trust with the kids, this can get easier...but even a good bus will have a few knuckleheads on it.  

10)Far worse than the kids are the adults in school administration.  Since I started driving every once in awhile clueless school administrators will come and try to suck up to drivers, and one of the time-tested line they use is, "The job you do is so important...it's like you are in charge of a classroom on wheels."  When I hear that, I know they've never been on a bus, because a)school teachers can actually see their students, not just in rear-view mirrors and b)we're not actually teaching them anything...buses are only classrooms in that the kids are learning about life (good and bad) from each other.  Drivers have no idea what goes on with the kids when they sink down below the seats.  

11)There are some school administrations who will occasionally recognize that transportation is not in their skill set, so they farm their bus services out to independent contractors.  I've never worked for one, and don't want to, but sometimes I think they can't be more clueless than educational administrators who talk about desired outcomes and assessments.  Real-world problems, like how to finish an afternoon drop off while arriving at a school at the same time to take a volleyball team to another town, are things they have no clue about.  

12)Finally, being a bus driver means that you have to deal sometimes with other bus drivers.  And most bus drivers are...different.  Maybe it's the strange hours, the PTSD of dealing with future psychopaths, or any of a hundred other reasons.  But do this long enough and it will change you, and not always for the better.  

So after all these points, why do I keep doing it?  Because I'm one of the few people for whom most of these obstacles are not deal-breakers.  My first job is flexible.  I get along well with most people.  I don't go running with minor problems to clueless administrators who think they know my job better than me.  I'm healthy enough that extreme heat and cold are not problems (yet).  

Who knows how many more years I will do this job part-time.  But I fear that somehow it may well become a dying industry.  If they can't ever create enough drivers, maybe they'll figure out a better way.  I'm guessing that 20 years from now my grandkids will go to school on buses run by UPS or Amazon.  

End of Job Limerick

Next week I will finish my 7th and final year of driving a school bus for our local school district.  I might go and keep driving for another district in the area, as I really do like the kids, I like the hours, I like the driving, and I like that for a part-time job it actually pays pretty well, especially in this time in which CDL drivers are finally getting paid what they are worth.  But I just can't keep driving where I'm at now.  

Several people who know that I'm quitting have asked me why, and at times I tell them at least part of the story, and other times I fall back on the old excuse, "I just need a change."  A part of me wants to write a 30-page screed listing each of the reasons why I want to leave (30 pages may not be long enough as these final few days wind down).  Another part of me thinks about expressing myself through a screenplay about the brave and honorable bus driver saving the children from the bogeymen of school administrators and road graders.  

But honestly I just don't think I want to spend my time doing something that nobody really cares about.  So today I came up on my 5th-to-last route a little limerick that I should pull out if I get asked again.  

There once was a driver from Mulvane.

The incompetent admins were driving him insane.

He thought about raising a mad mob,

But wisdom told him to quit the job,

Because it's just not worth the mental pain.

Duck and Cover and Die Anyway

My wife, who is a preschool teacher, spent her entire Saturday morning in a preparedness training session concerning gun violence.  She went through a variety of scenarios about parents holding children hostage or enraged gunmen storming her daycare.

My children regularly in their school have 'lockdown' drills.  Our high school this year will have new, stricter entry policies to reduce the possibility that gunmen or other undesirables are able to gain access to the interior of the building.

Every month at our bus driver monthly safety meetings we go over the many terrible possibilities that could happen on our buses.  We have lifesaving training that includes gunshot wound packing, violence de-escalation techniques, and other types of scenarios that hopefully we will never have to use.

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In the 1950s school kids across America were taught the technique of 'Duck and Cover'.  In the case of a nuclear detonation, it was thought that such outcomes might save a few lives, and in fact there is some evidence that having even the slightest shield from the radiation might well reduce the exposure and save a life.  Such techniques are today widely ridiculed, with the idea that 'if a nuclear explosion happens, what's the point of getting under a desk'?  Indeed, it seems quite ridiculous...better to not have a nuclear explosion.  Somewhere along the way as a nation things de-escalated to the point that I don't know that kids have to worry about nuclear annihilation.

But today, since the time that they were very small, my kids have been well aware that it's possible some nutjob with an automatic weapon could come in and start blasting away killing them or their teachers or classmates.  They live with this possibility just as much as I grew up doing tornado drills in Oklahoma.

It's a sad statement on our world that these realities are so possible today.  We live in a world of such horrific and sustained violence even as there is such an unwillingness to get to the causes of violence.  We'd rather have drill after drill to prepare us for their eventuality, and many believe that the best defense is a good offense.  Surely, it is thought, that teachers and citizens packing heat will deter the violence.  Give everybody a gun, they say, and we'll all be safer.

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Today a guy walked into a WalMart in El Paso, Texas and killed at least 20 people.

The Slog and the Spring

Spring break is finishing this weekend, and my children are gearing up for the final sprint to the end of the school year.  9 weeks of putting the finishing touches on whatever it means to be in the 5th and 7th grades: music programs, track meets, final exams, preparations to go to a new school or become the big dogs at the old school. 

It may seem like a sprint to the end, but it's a slog getting there.  We only have a few days off around Easter, and many of the kids are already checking out on their classes.  I would hate to be a teacher this time of year, and on my school bus I know that discipline is likely going to be a problem. 

But even as it's a slog, spring is finally peeking through.  Today it is 60 degrees and the sky is a beautiful, rich blue, and the long-term forecast calls for some showers here and there but no more of this arctic blast that numbs us and makes my thumbs start to crack.  I put my winter coat away the other day, and I do not anticipate having to get it out again for at least eight months.  Shoots of grass and weeds and perhaps even flowering plants are starting to break through my dormant yard.  Soon I'll have to go out and clean up the lawnmower and spend my evenings (with daylight savings time it's not dark now until almost 7:45pm) out mowing and cutting down the anxious plants that will not rest, even if a drought starts. 

I feel for my kids, as I know that they'd much rather be outside on a beautiful day than inside thinking about pre-algebra.  But soon the school year will be over, and they'll have all the time in the world to be outside (or, more likely, staring at their phones).  And I'll be happy to have made it through to summer as well. 

Cancelling Church

Our little church almost never cancels church.  But tonight while walking in for our Wednesday evening Bible classes I noticed that the weather that was predicted at 9:15 was coming in at 6:15.  A slow, steady freezing mist that covered everything like stink on a politician.  A few times I almost slipped, and by the time I arrived at our church building, having all along thought we were having church, I noticed that every car I walked by was covered with a glaze.  Talking to a few of our teachers, I quickly deduced that yeah, this might be a good time to stay home. 

Maybe we were a lot tougher in years gone by.  Maybe we were a lot more faithful to the Lord.  Truth is, we will get up and still drive to work tomorrow and earn that paycheck.  If the Chiefs had a game tomorrow night, I can think of many people who would brave brutal highway conditions (not to mention 4+ hours out in the hypothermic conditions) to go to the game. 

But while I sometimes wonder if maybe we have priorities messed up, as I get older and have experienced the misery of falling on the ice more than a few times, I think it's better to stay home.  Were it daylight, of course, that would be another story.  But nighttime?  I'm home. 

(And let me say, there is absolutely no chance that our local school district will be in session tomorrow.  We've only had one weather day so far this year, and they are just itching to have another.  I told my kids that they get $20 if we are in school, I'm so confident of this.  I certainly have no desire to drive my overglazed bus tomorrow.) 

The Bible in School

So there's a story that's gone under the radar a bit this week, that Trump is trying to shore up his base by encouraging schools to study the Bible, though it's never something he himself did.  Years ago I might have thought this was a good thing...but the older I get the more I could see that this might be a disaster for what remains of the Christian faith in this country.  It's not just that the closer Christians get to worldly power that they become less effective. 

But my first reaction this week in hearing this is "Who's going to be teaching?  And how will they approach the Bible?  Through the eyes of faith?  Or simply as just another book to be studied?"  Those who are older can appreciate the Bible as a literary masterpiece, I believe...but what about children?  Do those of us who are trying to instill a sense of faith through Biblical teaching really want to open the doors of others misusing it for a right-wing political agenda?  Think about it...

-In Joshua 10 there's the story of the sun standing still while Joshua holds up his hands and Israel fights a battle.  How's that going to be handled by somebody who does not look at Scripture through the eyes of faith? 
-When 1 Samuel 18:3 speaks about the covenant relationship David and Jonathan had because of their love, how's that going to be presented in this world in which same-sex relationships are affirmed?  Will it really be taught in its context or will it be used by teachers with certain agendas that conservative Christians would strongly object to? 
-Will the story of the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus be taught as fact, or as a myth explaining Christian origins?  The same could be asked about creation. 
-When it comes to reading Revelation, how will that be interpreted?  What if it is taught by a literalist who sees it as a timeline for the end times through a dispensational premillennial lens? 
-And heck, what will economic conservatives do when it comes to reading about the church in Acts selling all they have and pooling resources together?  Or reading prophetic denunciations of the wealthy buying second homes while the poor don't have anything?  Can you really see little Johnny come home and telling his MAGA parents that the Bible teaches communism? 

In a perfect world I want my children to learn Scripture as much as possible.  But I know about Scripture enough to know how badly it can be handled, sometimes even within the church.  So then do I really want my children to be confused at this point in their lives?  Someday they will have to make some hard decisions on how to read Scripture...but I want them guided by people of faith, not by public school teachers whose faith I know nothing about. 

7th grade social studies fun

My daughter struggles somewhat in school, and so many nights we work on math, science, or whatever.   This weekend being a long holiday weekend most of her teachers decided that this would be a good time to dump a bunch of homework on them.  One of those subjects is social studies. 

Next week sometime she has a test over 'Europe', and today we were working on her study guide questions through three chapters of her book.  So as we were working on answers I was getting to read her book that was published in 2010.   When we got to the section on France, there was a little entry about French soccer superstar Thierry Henry.  He's now retired, but much of the section had been about how he was combatting racism in soccer.  What if he had turned out to be another terrible person, a murderer or a rapist?  How would they have handled that in social studies class? 

I also noticed at times how these texts easily sum up all the big issues facing these countries in about two sentences.   The history of Germany is summed up in about three sentences, and little is made of German militarism or the causes of that. The industrial revolution brought about overcrowding in cities, disease, and environmental problems, but 'generally the standard of living was increased.'  Well, thanks for that.  European economics, we are also told, have been greatly enhanced by free trade...but of course, in the last 9 years much of Europe has become more xenophobic and the EU may be in trouble as a result. 

I guess it has to be impossible to write a school textbook for a fluid a subject as this without it being updated every year and having a teacher who really keeps his eyes open at the news of the world.  I'm glad that the kids also have current events classes, though of course what outlet they get news from will also greatly affect their view of those events, as well as the teachers who might be left- or right-wing nutjobs. 

But maybe we also need to update textbooks more than every ten years.  But I'm guessing the schools don't have the money for that, though we are told flatly that 'European and North American countries value education greatly.'  OK, then.