For Ted Chaudoir this is familiar territory. I graduated from this high school here, and whereas I couldn't get out of the area fast enough when I was 17, 10 years of living in the Cities I was mighty glad to be able to come back home to the family farm, take it over.
engine beeps and comes to life
But after decades in the dairy business, Ted and his wife took up another line of work, driving buses for the Southern Door County School district. I guess I never would have thought that this was a job that I could really love. But working with kids is pretty special. They treat you like a grandparent. But, even for the best grandparents, long drives with children can be... "challenging." It takes about an hour from the time my first students are on until I'm able to let them off for school in the morning. About three years ago, Ted noticed something that made those rides feel even longer. The youngest kids didn't have anything to do. They had folders with papers, and if I saw a child getting restless and I asked him to bring out a book, they were telling me they didn't have books. As it turned out, Ted had the opposite problem. When our daughter moved out on her own, my wife wanted to make her bedroom into a quilting shop. And what to do with all the books that we'd accumulated over the years for our daughter? I brought 'em on the bus, thinking, maybe they would like to have books. And that worked so well. You could see what it was doing for them during the ride. It was giving them something to do, occupying their time in something productive, for upwards of an hour. A few days after that, they started asking for more books, and we thought, there's something here. That's when I turned to our reading specialist, Mrs. Moseley, seeking more books. I say, "Absolutely." And I absolutely make it happen. And what I did was I went around to thrift stores at first, and then just purchased books at half price, and I asked the people if they would be willing to donate books. Started him with about $30 worth of books from a thrift store. And then we put it out into the community to say we were doing this program and if people had books to donate, if they would be willing to donate their books. And people just came forward in droves. Soon, there were books on other district buses, too. It was the beginning of a program that's now called, "Books on the Bus." I would say we have probably 1500, 1600 books currently available to us. But with 15 buses on regular routes and a couple sub buses with upwards of 80 to 100 books on each bus, we are carrying quite an inventory of books. Do you need a different book? As the program grew,
Ted learned two lessons
kids liked to read and they like reading to one another. The kids really like having older kids read to them and being able to show younger kids than them how well they can read. And, occasionally, you'll have children who will ask me if they can take a book home, I love to see the fact that they can bring a book home and enjoy it and bring it back when they want. More than three years into the project, Ted's work is still growing. Ted says all the buses in his district now carry books, and the local upholsterer is making special pouches to hold them. The project has been honored by two state-wide education organizations and featured in their newsletters. That's the pretty exciting part of it is that those same publications that we first advertised the story in were responsible for other school districts in our county to pick up on that and realize that, again, it sounded like a great idea. And some of those school districts mandated right away that all the buses have "Books on the Bus" on them. If you've finished your book, grab a different one. Ted says the project has a bright future. But whatever the road ahead, it's the kids behind him that matter most. I'll tell ya, it's like-- It's like a gift we've been given. So, we really feel that, because of how people feel about it, we do have to do it as well as we can. All right guys, have a nice weekend. Bye. See 'ya Monday.
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