When most people look back on their school days, the last image of childhood to ever be remembered fondly is the school bus, the great yellow shuttle between home and teachers.
However, that might be different for some students at Colvin Run Elementary, thanks to Nancy Gunderman, the bus driver.
Miss Nancy, as she’s known to her passengers and their parents alike, has created a mobile classroom for the duration of the children’s trip from home to school and back again, occupying their time by holding contests, creating currency and ‘stores,’ even holding elections and creating a bus newspaper.
“My son came off the bus one day with a little gift and said Miss Nancy gave it to him,” said Denis Yaro, who’s 10-year-old son, Zachary, is one of Miss Nancy’s passengers.
Miss Nancy remembers each child’s birthday, decorating the bus with balloons and streamers and giving each a little trinket, he said.
“He came home one day and said they were going to have an election on the bus when we had the national election last fall,” Yaro said.
The charm and impact Miss Nancy has on the students is noticeable. “Children tend to be monosyllabic when you ask about their day, but he [Zachary] talks about what’s going on on the bus a lot,” he said.
The children have set up little stores, using currency designed by one of the students, to sell, barter and trade goodies like stuffed animals and other toys, he said.
THE FIRST CURRENCY was called “Sesames” because the bills featured Sesame Street characters on them, he said. “They had a contest to design new currency, and Zachary won. He spent as much time on it as he does any school project.”
The practice of commerce is more for the fun than the goods, he said, and happens a few times a week.
In addition, the children write and publish a newspaper, complete with articles about what’s going on in school and on the bus.
“Zachary hates writing, but he wrote an article for the paper,” Yaro said. “He even designed the masthead for the paper.”
Lisa Hodge’s son, Brad, tells her similar stories of Miss Nancy.
“We joke at the bus stop that the kids learn so much on the bus we don’t need to sign them up for after-school activities,” she said.
“One day, Brad got off the bus with a huge stuffed horse he said he’d won in a contest and Miss Nancy gave it to him,” Hodge said of her introduction to Miss Nancy.
The children had a hat-designing contest for her, she said, and when her son was serving on safety patrol, Miss Nancy “made a whole package of papers he needed, which made him feel so special,” Hodge said.
“She’s amazing,” she said of Miss Nancy. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
And it’s apparent the students enjoy what Miss Nancy does for them: Yaro said his son has made cookies for Miss Nancy, and Hodge said the children don’t seem to want to get off the bus after a 40-minute bus ride.
“I’m more comfortable knowing my child is with Miss Nancy. I have a lot of confidence in her,” Hodge said. “The things she does for the kids are the things you’d expect from a really excellent teacher.”
EVEN THOUGH the entire fleet of bus drivers at Colvin Run is “excellent,” principal Sandy Furick recognizes the special qualities of Miss Nancy.
“I think she’s come in and read to some classes,” she said. “We have a whole group of drivers that are really nice. She’s made it fun for the kids to be on the bus.”
The students on Miss Nancy’s run are part of the Gifted and Talented (GT) program and are bused in from the Great Falls Elementary School district into Colvin Run, she said.
“Miss Nancy is really caring and definitely goes above and beyond what’s expected,” Furick said. “Her mission, it seems, is to make the bus ride enjoyable.”
“She’s doing an amazing job of being creative with the kids,” said Elaine Tholin, whose 9-year-old son Jeff rides Miss Nancy’s bus. “My son just loves her.”
Jeff was elected to be the chief justice on the bus, a job that he does in conjunction with being a safety patrol officer.
“His job is to keep track of the safety rules for riding the bus,” Tholin said. “Miss Nancy gave him an envelope with all the forms he needs in it so he can keep track of anyone that’s giving him a problem or not following the rules, and if the problem doesn’t get better, the child can get ‘fined’ and has to pay with the bus currency.”
She said her son is learning responsibility from his positions on the traveling classroom, and the other children have also proven their respect for Miss Nancy by following special requests.
“Last week when it was snowing, she asked the children to be really quiet so she could concentrate on the slick roads,” Tholin said. “Jeff said the kids were all silent, and it was because of their respect for her.”
The Tholin family lives “about as far out as you can live and still go to Colvin Run,” which initially concerned Tholin in regard to how much time her son would spend on the bus each day.
“ONE DAY SHE did a scavenger hunt on the bus where the kids had to look for certain names on a mailbox or a certain road,” she said. “It’s great that she keeps the kids occupied. I’m so glad my son isn’t having the typical bus experience with children being noisy and misbehaving.”
Jeff used to ask his mom to drive him to school, but since the arrival of Miss Nancy, those requests have stopped.
A veteran driver of 12 years, Miss Nancy came to Colvin Run when the school opened for the 2003-04 school year.
“The kids have a long bus ride. Some are here for almost an hour each way,” she said. “Kids get antsy. I figured we could start doing activities to keep them occupied. They’re bright kids,” she said.
“This all started around the elections. I thought it might be fun to make the kids feel they were part of it,” she said. The children held an election for president, vice president, governor, mayor, Congress and the Senate, as well as the chief justices. Almost all of the 31 students on the bus won a position, she said.
“From there, most of the ideas have come from the children,” she said. Each idea submitted by a child earns five dollars in Blazer Bucks, the currency that has the same name as the bus.
“I WAS KIND of hesitant with the idea of creating money because I didn’t want it to get competitive, but the kids wanted to have a little society,” Miss Nancy said. “They earn money for the little jobs they have and the contests they win, which keeps it fair.”
The money is also used to pay fines for when the children don’t behave as well as they should.
“Those fines work better than any other reprimand ever could,” Miss Nancy said with a laugh.
The projects, contests and games on the bus evolve and change as the children’s interest change. If an idea submitted by a child is chosen to be the next bus project, the child who submitted it is responsible for running it, she said.
Miss Nancy has one daughter, with whom she’s very close, who helped inspire the idea of having projects on the bus. “I only have one child, so I’m kind of like a surrogate mom here,” she said.
And the children seem to love Miss Nancy.
When asked what he liked best about her, Jeff Tholin said, “Pretty much everything. We have money on the bus and jobs and get paychecks every week.”
He said he doesn’t ask to be driven by his mom to school any more, even though it’s a shorter ride, “because riding on the bus is more fun. The time goes by fast when I’m having fun on the bus. She’s a cool bus driver.”
“She’s pretty much the coolest bus driver that ever was,” said Brad Hodge, another of Miss Nancy’s passengers.
He lives about 45 minutes from his school, but he doesn’t mind the long rides. “It’s great because I get an hour and a half on the bus every day,” he said. “She’s really fun and doesn’t get mad at us.”
“You get money for entering contests and for having ideas, and if she picks your idea, you get even more money,” he said.
“Now that the new money is out, people are opening their shops again, so we go around and buy stuff on the bus ride to school,” Zachary Yaro said. “She does a lot of really neat stuff on the bus. No other bus drivers do that.”
Zachary, who loves to cook, will sometimes take some cookies in for Miss Nancy. “She does all this nice stuff for us, we should do something nice for her, too,” he said. “She’s an amazing bus driver.”