We have two CBI (community based instruction) days a week.
The day before, the students form groups and decide where they want to go. Then, based on that, the aides and I assign ourselves to chaperone a group. I again got placed with the group going the farthest away from school (to a shopping center that's like three miles from my house).
Before we leave, the students make a travel plan. Using Google Maps on their phones, they figure out which city bus we need to catch. Because of where the shopping center is located, we had to take two buses.
As I am a novice bus rider, I let Eddy figure out what buses we were to take. Kind of. (The initial route Eddy picked went way out of the way to get there. But that route had a bus leaving way earlier than the route we chose to take.)
Plan in place, we got to the bus stop way early. But the bus arrived when Google Maps said it would, and we were on our way.
The shopping center is on a busy street. It has parking in the middle with the stores all around the edges, so it's a hike to get from one end to the other. And hike is what we did as we started with WalMart and ended with Barnes & Noble, which are on opposite sides from one another.
(This is the shopping center with the closest Michael's to me, so I go there quite often. If I were to visit those stores on my own, I would have driven the distance. I mean, it's walkable, but through a parking lot, and it is quite a distance.)
By the time we got to the bookstore, it was close to the time we had to leave if we wanted to catch the bus, according to the time Eddy had figured out. We had a little time, though.
About the time we should have left, Eddy needed to use the restroom. By the time I located him, it was past time we should have headed out. We had to cross a busy street to get to our bus stop, not to mention the distance it was from the store to the street.
By the time we got to the street, we spied the bus. There was no way we were going to get to the bus stop before it.
And the next bus wasn't due for an hour.
Oops.
Luckily, the group I was with didn't have to get back to campus for anything that day.
As long as we made the next bus, we'd get back before the end of the school day. (And we had to get back before the end of the school day as some students take the school bus to get home.) We'd be late, but not too late.
It took a bit to convince the students that sitting at the bus stop was not necessary. If we kept better track of time, we could get back in time to make the next bus. (I had them time how long it took us to get to the PetSmart, and then we calculated when we had to leave based on that.)
We made it with time to spare, and we made it back to the school. It was about forty minutes later than I would have liked, but it was twenty minutes before they would have sent out search parties. (I had my phone, so I could have called the school or the school could have called me.)
I'm not sure if this was a good lesson for them or not. I'll definitely be more careful about bus times after this.
I'm sure you stayed calm and collected, in and of itself providing a good learning experience as you showed them how to solve the issue. :)
ReplyDeleteI knew we had time, and me panicking wouldn't have helped anyone.
DeleteA good learning experience for the students, and you handled it well. I grew up in New York City in a household without a car (not unusual back in the 1960's) and I used NYC mass transit a lot while growing up. It does take planning, time use skills and patience.
ReplyDeleteIt does. But it's well worth learning how to get around. Alas, California mass transit isn't anywhere near what New York's is. (The car companies made sure of that decades ago.)
DeleteI like the idea of community based instruction. It's a good life skill for kids to have. I'd be a novice bus rider, too, because I've never lived anywhere with a mass transit system.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good lesson to me. One takeaway is to plan for the unexpected, and leave yourself an extra cushion of time. I haven't taken a public bus in years and would have to learn the process.
ReplyDeleteIt's always so tricky with buses! they never always arrive right on time either and if they aren't frequent it means I'm often waiting at the stop 10 minutes befor ethey arrive! And then they are 10 minutes late so that's 20 minutes wasted...haha!
ReplyDeleteHope that your week is going well and you have a nice weekend planned ahead :)
Away From The Blue
Exactly the problem we ran into. Sigh. Well, live and learn.
DeleteWhen I was a Personal Care Assistant (it seemed like ages ago) for our high school's Life Skills class, I ALWAYS looked forward to CBIs. The kids had a ball and so did the TAs. Shopping, pizza, bowling, you name it.
ReplyDeleteYup, that's how we do it, too. Today they decided they wanted McDonald's (or In-N-Out--these are close together). I'm already ready for lunch :)
DeleteBy the way, we always used a school bus. Your way sounds like it would be more beneficial for the kids.
ReplyDeleteLiability issues. With us, part of the point is to teach them how to use city transit, so the bus is curricular ;)
DeleteI guess I went to school in dark ages.
ReplyDeleteCoffee is on and stay safe
They're learning a good skill, aren't they?
ReplyDeleteI used to catch the bus or train all the time in Brisbane, but now we are in Canberra which has terrible public transport so it is car only, pretty much.
ReplyDelete