#Massachusetts bus driver returns to school, aims to teach students he once drove

Instead of driving students, he’s planning to teach them.

A Massachusetts bus driver is crediting the students he ferried to and from school for “inspiring” him to return to school for his teaching credentials.

Clayton Ward, 30, was raised in a family of proud school bus drivers — including his mom, dad and grandfather — who owned a school bus company in Tennessee, where he grew up. Although he never intended to become one himself, he took up the role full time while living in Framingham, Massachusetts, when his collegiate career ended after only a few semesters.

“I never lost that need or that want to do more schooling or have a degree,” Ward, who just earned his associate degree from MassBay Community College, told CBS News. “I got the inspiration [to go back] after talking specifically to my high schoolers about a passion of mine, which is history.”

“Some kids were like, ‘You should be my teacher’ or ‘I wish you were my teacher’ because it was a different view, a different voice instead of hearing the same thing [from their teachers] over and over again,” he said in an interview with CNN.

By May 2019, after a decade out, he returned to studies at MassBay at night while maintaining his full-time job as a bus driver during the day.

Now, the recent graduate boasts a 4.0 GPA, dean’s list honors and an invitation to the Phi Theta Kappa National Honor Society, MassBay announced in a recent statement. In the fall, he’ll continue on at Framingham State to begin coursework toward a bachelor’s degree.

His virtual commencement ceremony was held on Tuesday night.

“I’m still on cloud nine,” he said. “I didn’t think I would ever be at this point … I expected to do well, but I didn’t imagine doing straight As, I didn’t imagine being on the dean’s list, getting three or four awards for having one of the best GPAs for the graduating class. It’s still kind of all surreal to me.”

“Clayton really exemplifies the spirit of MassBay — resilience, persistence, and dedication,” Nina B. Keery, the MassBay Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, said in a statement. “I am so proud of his accomplishments across his program and division. His future students will benefit in so many ways.”

Ward, who hopes to become a history teacher, knows he’s in a good position to encourage students to pursue higher education — and to not overlook community colleges.

“Once they realized that I was going to school, they started asking questions about what it was like and stuff like that,” he says.

Ward says that he intends to make a career in “low-income” communities who he believes need him most.

“That’s where I’m geared to go towards, just because of my experience,” he says. “Even with my family and their bus company, a lot of the routes we did were through lower-income housing.”

In other words, he’s paying forward the support and motivation he derived from the students he drove to and from school.

“You wouldn’t think that kids can do something like that, to make such a large impression and give me the drive and ambition that I need to make the decision to go back to school,” Ward said. “It’s kind of crazy that such a small thing can make such an impact on your life.”