When it comes to showing kindness and support for others, one bus driver for the Madison City Schools district in Alabama as an endless amount of encouragement for her student-passengers.
“They’re not allowed to talk negative about each other’s color, their race or anything that’s negative about that other student,” driver Angel Woods shares.
Angel is a mother and a grandmother, and she continues to show her motherly side when she is on that bus taking care of what she calls her “other kids.”
“I started telling them that they have to say something positive about themselves every day,” says Angel.
During a ride home from school one day, one of the students, Caleb McFadden, shot a video of Angel telling each of the students something good about themselves, and his mom shared it on Facebook.
Caleb’s mom, Kimberly, says, “All she had to do was take the kids home, but she took the time to pull over and just talk to the kids about self-worth and importance . . . and just gave each one of them like a positive affirmation.”
Kimberly continues, “You don’t know what their home life is like . . . and that might be the only positive thing they hear all day long, so I think it’s pretty awesome.”
Of Angel’s encouragement, Caleb shares, “Nowadays, there’s a lot of depression and like self-doubt and stuff so I think it’s a pretty cool idea for her to like try to encourage everybody . . . and make everybody feel better about themselves.”
The rule of being kind to each other when on Angel’s bus started one day, when she overheard one student say something ugly to another student. While still on school property, Angel stopped the bus and discussed with her “kids” why that was not acceptable.
“In every last one of them, there’s a something different and something unique and something special,” Angel shares, continuing, “But I want them to believe in themselves like I believe in them.”
Angel’s boss, John Wilson (the school system’s transportation coordinator) wasn’t surprised by “what [Angel] was doing and how she was addressing her children on the bus.”
John continues, ‘Obviously from the video, you could see that she was putting herself in their shoes so to speak and trying to really empathize with them in situations they were going through.”
Angel’s love and encouragement are as routine as the routes she drives daily, and the kids value it as much as their parents.
Angel has taken her own life lessons and pays them forward by leaning in to help future generations, saying, “I got bullied when I was a kid and I didn’t like it . . . I wish somebody would have gave me a positive message at that time.”
And that is exactly what she continues to do today.
Angel leaves us with this, “Be yourself and enjoy being you.”
(MSN)
