(CBS/WVLT) -- A Massachusetts school bus driver said the students he drove to school inspired him to get back into the classroom, and now he has a degree. CBS News reported that Clayton Ward moved from Tennessee, where his family owned a school bus company, to Massachusetts where he followed in their footsteps and became a school bus driver. Ward said he attended college 10 years ago but dropped out after a few semesters.
But he said he always wanted to continue his education, “I never lost that need or that want to do more schooling or have a degree,” Ward told CBS News.”
Ward said it was his student riders who inspired him to go back and complete his associate’s degree.
"I got the inspiration [to go back] after talking specifically to my high schoolers about a passion of mine, which is history," Ward said. "Just talking with them a little bit about history ... it inspired me, especially hearing them say, 'You should be my teacher.'"
Last May, he enrolled at MassBay Community College while still driving a buss in Framingham full-time. CBS reported his ultimate goal was to become a high school history teacher. Eventually, the students who inspired him learned he was going back to school. ”It came up in conversation, especially some of the older ones who are starting to look at colleges ... I said, ‘If you’re looking at community college, you should look at MassBay, it’s a good school,’” he said. “Once they realized that I was going to school, they started asking questions about what it was like and stuff like that.”
CBS reported that Ward earned a spot on the Dean’s List each semester at MassBay, and his class work became a source of focus for him when the pandemic hit. He finished his degree, and now, he’s heading to Framingham State to complete his bachelor’s degree.
"It's right in the area where I would like to teach, because Framingham is a lower-income city. That's where I'm geared to go towards, just because of my experience. Even with my family and their bus company, a lot of the routes we did were through lower-income housing," he said.
Ward said he has one message for the high schoolers who inspired him: “You guys mean so much to me. I thank you for every time we were able to talk. It gave me more of a drive, more ambition to go [to school].”
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Students inspire school bus driver to get teaching degree - WVLT
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