Q&A
Using the School Bus to Teach Life Skills in Class
T
his month at the TSD Conference in Louisville, attendees can learn specifics on an innovative program that aims to revolutionize how transportation
departments not only educate students with disabilities on school bus safety rules but also provide life skills. Pete Meslin, director of transportation at
Newport-Mesa Unified School District in Southern California, developed and implemented the Bus in the Classroom program over the past year, and has been using it to to great success throughout the district. He’s also began a road show, visiting such places as Utah to share the program with other districts. Te main tenet is to utilize transportation staff
to teach students with disabilities about such daily activities as boarding the bus, buckling and un- buckling their seat belts and onboard behavior, but doing so in the classroom, where this population is best conditioned to learn skills and tasks. At the same time, it gives the students the confidence they need in the safe setting of the classroom,
58 School Transportation News • MARCH 2016
builds rapport between them and their drivers and lays the groundwork for lifelong transit ridership. We caught up with Meslin for an inside look at
the program, why he developed it and how school districts across the country can adopt it.
School Transportation News:When you
created the Bus in the Classroom program what were your goals? Pete Meslin: Initially I was very concerned
that transportation, as a related service, was not encouraging student independence. In addition to not complying with this dictate of IDEA, we were not contributing to building effective, function- al adults. Virtually all other related services are focused on independence for our students, but we weren’t. Terefore, our students were less indepen- dent and less safe than they could have been. In essence, students with special needs were not pre- pared to lead productive post-secondary lives and we weren’t doing anything about it. My goal in de- veloping this program was to fill this gaping hole in our service. I knew transportation providers had
A Newport- Mesa Unified school bus driver teaches students with disabilities in their classroom about safe boarding procedures.
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