For Michelle Stanislaus and her team of drivers, a once-ordinary monthly meeting has transformed into a cherished “family dinner,” complete with shared dishes and a sense of togetherness.
“Well, I wanted to make our monthly meetings a little more fun and open,” she said. “So I started inviting everyone to eat lunch while we talked.”
The team would cover the necessities first -- new trainings or protocols that needed to be completed or reviewed -- before moving on to an open discussion. Here, drivers are invited to share stories or incidents from their routes and brainstorm responses or solutions with each other.
“After a while of just eating our own lunches during our meetings, people started bringing things to share with the group,” Michelle said. “That’s when we started calling them our ‘family dinners.’”
Michelle started driving with ACPS when she saw a commercial advertisement calling for bus drivers after the COVID-19 pandemic and felt a call to help her community. She was already working but felt the call to help get our students to and from school.
“I love the kids, and the community needed it,” she said. So, she called back to her time as a bus driver in Long Island before she moved to Virginia, got a new CDL and began driving routes in Crozet.
It wasn’t long before Michelle was promoted to lead driver. For her, her team really is her family, she said.
“When you care about your people as human beings first,” she said, “they become good employees.”
Working with her team to make sure their families are taken care of is her main goal, she said. When her team members’ families are taken care of, they can better focus on the job.
Her favorite part of the job, though, is forming relationships with the kids, she said.
“They’re just so fun, especially the elementary school kids,” Michelle said. “They’re so funny, just a riot.”
The kids are what keeps her driving every week, she said. “It always tickles me when I get a haircut. They just stare at me until I go, ‘Yes, I got a haircut!’”
The older kids are a different kind of relationship, she said.
“You really have to work for their affection,” she said. “I always tell them good morning and to have a good day and wish them a good evening when they get off of the bus. When you finally get that ‘Good morning,’ or ‘Have a good night,’ back, it’s so rewarding because you really had to lay the foundation there.”
When she’s not shuttling students to and from school, Michelle’s favorite pastime is travel, especially with her family. One of her favorite experiences was completing a half-marathon in Paris with her daughter. Another favorite trip was an Alaskan cruise she took with a friend.
“The most surprising part,” Michelle said about her trip to Alaska, “was how many bald eagles there are up there. We passed this one house and there was a flock of them just hanging out on the roof.”
But, no matter how far she goes, she’ll come back for her students, she said.
“I just love the kids and the environment of Albemarle County.”