Loading the bus (counting off)

Loading the bus (counting off)
Traveling with a group of 60 comprised of mainly teenagers can be a bit challenging. At any stop, it takes a long time to get them all back on the bus. If there is junk food available, they all need to get a candy bar, or the giant bottle of Mountain Dew. We’ve found that we even need to remind them to go to the bathroom. At almost every stop, 1 hour after we are on the road someone comes up and says when will we be at the next rest room. When I ask if they went when we stopped, they say “well I didn’t have to go then”.
One thing we do on bus trips is give everyone a bus number. You count off every time we have everyone on the bus to make sure no one is missing. Your number is the same throughout the trip. You’d think that after everyone gets the hang of it, it would take a minute or so to count off. It usually took 5 minutes to get through 60 numbers. It did get faster, because the kids that never seemed to remember their number would be reminded by those that were next to them in numerical order. It is a good system, because we don’t have to count heads, or ask if anyone is missing. It did work, because at one stop we would have left one of the kids in the bathroom, but his number didn’t come up, so we knew we needed to wait. So if you are in casual conversation with someone and your child is within ear-shot, and you happen to say the number that comes before your child’s bus number they just my shout their number out, because that’s what they were conditioned to do.