Ride Our Bus

Preschool class starts the moment children step into Terri Will’s Head Start bus in Portsmouth, Ohio, but they don’t know it. To them, the bus trip is a joyride, the start of a day of playful discovery, not to mention recess, breakfast and lunch. On this particular spring morning, several children were so eager to get on with the trip that they were impatient to say goodbye to their dads and their moms, some still in pajamas, who lingered to chat with Will.

The trip from trailer parks and strips of public housing to the Head Start center in Portsmouth winds through the Appalachian hills of southern Ohio, just across the Ohio River from Kentucky. Out the window are farmers on tractors, cornfields, horses, cows, the river, fast food restaurants, billboards, stop signs, route signs, trucks and many other things that make the kids blurt out a sound, word or share a story fragment. Will, who is both their bus driver and preschool teacher, says she has learned to seize these language-learning moments and try to make the most of them. Will seems like one of those people born to teach, but she modestly deflects praise to HeadsUp! Reading, a professional development course she took at the start of a two-year college program in early childhood development. Using the Internet and satellite television, the program provides preschool teachers with the latest research on how children acquire language and literacy skills as well as with practical suggestions for applying that research in the classroom.

In Will’s rolling classroom, the school bus, she responds with interest to the children, probing gently as she helps them discover words to describe the sights or express the fantasies and feelings that the trip shakes loose.

Out of the blue, Zachary, a four-year-old, issues a somber announcement about his brother: “A.J. hates kindergarten.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” says Will. “But do you think he really hates kindergarten? Hate is such a bad, angry feeling; maybe A.J. really means that he dislikes kindergarten? You know, a lot of children are nervous about kindergarten, but most end up liking it. I think you will like it. It’s a lot like Head Start.”

The shy boy smiles, and the kids start singing the alphabet song

.The bus trip does not end in the school parking lot, but continues inside the classroom, where an entire wall is covered with paintings of the bus, the children and the milestones on the route. The mural is an art, language, literacy and all-around fun project, with an ever-changing array of highway landmarks and seasonal effects. Nearly everything is identified with a label, not to force reading skills, but to accustom the children to seeing the name of a familiar object next to its painted image. Switching from her role as bus driver/talk show host to teacher/game show host, Will touches pictures on the wall with a pointer and asks questions. Barely containing excitement about their growing store of knowledge, the children hop up and down and giggle as they rattle off names, descriptions and memories.

And when it comes to story time, a favorite poem is “Ride Our Bus,” written on poster board by Will and illustrated by the children. They are learning the poem by heart and eagerly take turns pretending to “read” it by moving their fingers skillfully—left to right, top to bottom and, usually, over the appropriate words—as they recite the rhyming lines:

We ride a yellow school bus
It’s big enough for all of us
We go up the streets and then back down
We ride the bus all through our town
The bus stops here, the bus stops there
We pick up children everywhere
So come and ride to school with us!
It’s fun to ride the Head Start bus!

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