A bus driver shortage last year in the Platte County R-3 School District was a worry not only for the district administrators, but also for students who play on the sports teams and their coaches.
Teacher and coach Tyrone Seymour decided he couldn’t stand by and watch his players’ disappointment due to missed games. So, he decided to ‘take the wheel.’
The Platte Purchase Middle School seventh-grade social studies teacher who coaches middle school boys football and girls basketball decided, as daunting as the idea was, he was going to learn to drive a bus.
An email had been sent out to all the coaches that said if they would like to be certified for a commercial license, the transportation department would provide training and would pay for their tests.
“It was kind of funny at first,” Seymour said. “I thought, there is no way I would do that. That’s crazy talk and so I wasn’t one of the people who jumped at the opportunity. Driving a bus seemed scary and nerve wracking. But they said the way the training works, people would be totally prepared to take the tests. So I thought about it some more.”
He realized as a middle school coach, if games were going to be canceled or moved due to a lack of drivers, it definitely wouldn’t be varsity football, and it would most likely be middle school sports. So, he thought if learning to drive a bus was something he could do to help all the players make it to their games, that would be great.
“It was really scary at first,” Seymour said. “I have a healthy respect for how big those buses are and how especially, if you aren’t paying attention you could run something, or somebody over with these huge, heavy vehicles and barely feel it.”
One of the things he learned pretty quickly was that with all of the big mirrors and the big steering wheel, driving a bus didn’t feel that much different from driving a smaller vehicle.
“One thing the training really prepares you for is thinking about what you’re doing with the vehicle and planning out where you’re going so you can do things safely,” Seymour said. “And truthfully that’s always been how I’ve approached driving anyway.”
While the largest vehicle he had ever driven was a U-Haul, with the help of an excellent trainer, Seymour said he passed both the written test, and the actual driving test and received a commercial driver’s license.
He has been a teacher for 18 years, and 12 years have been in the Platte County School District, including at Barry School.
“I tell my students all the time that I might be biased but I believe social studies is the best subject to teach because it touches on all aspects of education and life,” Seymour said. “Some days we come to class and it’s like art class, and then it’s like English class or math or science. So it gives me a lot of flexibility to do a lot of fun things because kids learn in different ways.”
While some people believe that social studies classes are just about history, he believes it’s about so many more things.
“It has to do with sociology and how people work together and a big part of it is geography and other things. Its an all-encompassing subject for me.”
At the beginning of each school year, his first assignment is on fact, opinion, and belief systems.
“A lot of times in social studies class we discuss things that are difficult to talk about, so we need to be able to know if something is a fact or if it’s an opinion that somebody’s making to sound like it’s a fact, or if it’s their belief system,” Seymour said. “So we spend a lot of time making sure that we understand that, so we can go through and analyze history, which is an important skill for living in a democracy and a republic. It’s Important for kids and adults alike to know where to look for the truth, a skill we all need some brushing up on.”
He loves teaching and says it’s a lot of fun, with many more good days than bad days. When he runs across former students, a lot of times they tell him how much they enjoyed his class.
“I’ve heard some say, ‘When I was in your class I really hated it, but it helped me so much when I got to high school or when I got to college,” Seymour said. “For some students I don’t think they see the value of a social studies class when they are a student, but they see it later.”
On the first day of the school year he tell students that the class will be hard and that he’s telling them now so later in the year when they say, “Mr. Seymour this class is hard,” he can say, “I know, I told you the first day of school that it would be hard.” But he also tells them that he will never work harder for them for their grade, but he will always work as hard as they will. And the more effort they put in, he will always be there to help them and back them up because he wants them all to be successful.
When he was young, he wanted to be a psychologist because he thought it would be “really neat” to help people. But when he started school, he didn’t think that he had the mental fortitude to be able to deal with other people’s problems and, at the same time, deal with his own problems. So, he began to look at other things that he could do to help people.
“I thought I would really enjoy teaching,” Seymour said. “My grandfather was a teacher and I have an aunt who is a teacher. You could kind of say it runs in the family.”
One of the reasons he thinks students end up appreciating the class is because he doesn’t always tell them how to fix their problems. “But I tell them we will work through them,” Seymour said. “So a lot of times if kids ask me questions I tell them, ‘I can’t tell you the answer but here’s what you need to think about.’ I was a pretty smart kid so I know all the tricks and things that kids do to try and avoid work, or make their work seem like it was good when they didn’t really put in their best effort.
“Usually there a few kids who like to wait until the last minute to do things. They get a couple of bad grades and their parents are upset and they are able to reset, and they figure it out and learn to produce stuff that they’re really proud of.”
One of the rewarding parts of being a teacher for Seymour is encouraging his students to work hard and always push themselves to get better.
“I’ve had kids who will feel excited about getting a B-minus or a C-plus because they feel like it’s a grade that they earned as opposed to the kids that got A’s and just rolled through it and didn’t have to work or study for it,” Seymour said. “It’s great to see kids grateful for the work they put in even though it’s not as high of a grade, but knowing that they earned it and worked for it, and that motivates them to want to be better.”
Seymour said the vast majority of teachers want to partner with parents, and want the best for the students, and think of them as part of their village.
“I can definitely see myself being a teacher until I retire,” Seymour said.