It\u2019s 5 a.m. in the morning and the dawn has yet to break as 22-year-old Ricardo Martinez waits for the start light in Bus 5 to turn off. As the light goes out, he cranks the key, the engine roars and it\u2019s time to start the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Alice native rode the bus to school from elementary to high school and now is starting his fourth year driving a school bus for Alice ISD (AISD).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was a little boy and the Disney movie Sky High<\/em> came out. Ron Wilson [was the] bus driver, don\u2019t ask me why, but he was my role model and I was like I\u2019m gonna drive a bus. That was my goal graduating high school. \u2018I don\u2019t know how or when but I\u2019m gonna get my CDL to drive a school bus,\u2019\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Martinez started the process of acquiring his CDL in August 2018 while also attending Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK). Fast-forward to 2021, and with college graduation on the horizon, Martinez plans to teach the very students he transports to school every day in Alice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was a bus aide on a special needs route and did that for about a month, and then I got bored,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cI was like okay I want to be a driver and so I studied [during] my first semester at TAMUK, having to juggle my first set of college classes and working on my CDL was not easy, but I had the great training and support for my supervisor Daniel Galvan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Galvan is the Transportation Supervisor for Alice ISD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe is a very good driver for his age, he actually started out when he was 18,\u201d Galvan said of Martinez. \u201cA lot of these students when they graduate, I don\u2019t think they have the responsibility that they need to become a driver, but Ricardo was actually very dependable. He had it all and that was one of the reasons we actually trained him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the Department of Public Transportation you must be 18 years old to receive a CDL. Although Martinez was of age, Galvan said he received some concern from others while training Martinez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe\u2019s very dependable and respectful and that\u2019s what we need in a driver. He\u2019s also very responsible for his age; it\u2019s very rare in my opinion,\u201d Galvan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Martinez was the first 18-year-old driver for the district, which hosts 13 drivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was October 24th, 2018, I went to Corpus and did my driving test which you have to know everything mechanically about the school bus and you also have to parallel park a school bus. I mean, I don\u2019t know how I did it on the bus, I can barely parallel my car sometimes but we got it done,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Martinez was recently given a promotion within AISD and completes a route where he picks up and drops off 70 elementary school students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLet me just tell you those little kids stole my heart because I welcome the idea of teaching elementary now, middle school a little bit more so, but if I had to choose, I still want to do high school. If not high school, elementary, definitely those little kids stole my heart, those little Coyotes,\u201d he said. \u201cThey just have so much love to give and they see you in the morning\u2026\u2018oh it\u2019s Mr. Ricky.\u2019 We forget that our custodians, our school bus drivers, our secretaries play such an important role in our students and the day they have. As a school bus driver, you\u2019re most likely the first face they see of the district in the morning and the last one in the afternoon so my goal, and it\u2019s not easy, but my goal is to always start the day and end the day on a good note with my students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Martinez is an interdisciplinary studies major with a concentration in technology application at TAMUK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI knew I wanted to be a teacher since I was in elementary school, middle school, high school. I had teachers that made such an impact that I couldn\u2019t see myself doing anything besides education, so when I got here to TAMUK I knew I wanted to be an educator,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last spring Martinez conducted student observations with Cori Cardenas, a Javelina alumnus, who teaches eighth grade with Kingsville ISD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe goal for students in student observation is basically getting their feet wet in the classroom,\u201d Cardenas said. \u201cSo what Ricardo was doing was basically watching me and observing me and what I do in the classroom, what I do as a teacher. He\u2026wasn\u2019t shy, the kids loved him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His experience as a bus driver will serve him in the classroom, Cardenas said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Martinez said it never occurred to him that the students he currently transports could be his students next year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI do think being a school bus driver has set that foundation in terms of classroom management because when you\u2019re the school bus driver, you\u2019re in charge of your bus and you\u2019re expected to have order in your bus and for everyone to get home safely and come to school safe,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Martinez, a McNair Scholar, also plans to apply for graduate school to pursue his master\u2019s in hopes of being an administrator one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m hoping and praying that they put me in Alice for my student teaching, because that means that I would most likely be able to stay at the department where I\u2019m at right now. I\u2019m really hoping and praying hard that that\u2019s what happens, but whatever happens, happens, you know?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Martinez, a senior, is entering the last year of his bachelor\u2019s program, but has plenty of inspiration to finish the year citing the students on his bus as his biggest motivators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou don\u2019t do it for the pay whether you\u2019re a teacher, principal, bus driver, custodian, you don\u2019t do it for the money, you do for the students,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to love students and have their best interest in mind to be in any field in education and that is my goal, to make an impact in the field of education in our area.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From bus driver to teacher It\u2019s 5 a.m. in the morning and the dawn has yet to break as 22-year-old Ricardo Martinez waits for the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":5983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,125,131],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[195],"class_list":["post-5982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news-and-features","category-newsletter"],"aioseo_notices":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"authors":[{"term_id":195,"user_id":48,"is_guest":0,"slug":"ronni-reyna","display_name":"Ronni Reyna","avatar_url":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/wp-content\/litespeed\/avatar\/16b00811e260d2068b61907787d9e60e.jpg?ver=1775001609","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5984,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5982\/revisions\/5984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5982"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}