Bus driver honored for efforts to promote literacy

TAMPA, Fla. — Hillsborough County Public Schools bus driver Timothy Driggers was honored recently with the Celebrate Literacy Award for implementing a literacy program on his school bus.

The annual award is given by the Hillsborough County Council of PTA/PTSAs and the Hillsborough County Council of the International Reading Association.

Driggers, who drives a bus for Lomax Elementary Magnet School, was nominated by the school’s media specialist, Rhonda Hurst.

In the nomination application, Hurst described how the Lomax staff hears Driggers reading to his students from his parked school bus every morning with an expressive voice. The children listen attentively because Driggers urges them to make predictions about what will happen next in the story, and he asks the students questions to ensure that they have understood what he has read.

The students reportedly become so enthralled in each story that they are reluctant to disembark the bus.

Driggers has read approximately eight chapter books to his students so far this year. The interaction with his students through the program has also greatly reduced discipline issues, district officials said.

Driggers has been a school bus driver for Hillsborough County Public Schools since 2005.