Yesterday we had a girl at school who got so drunk that she passed out in the bathroom and had to be rushed to the hospital. Apparently at lunch she and her friends decided to chug some tequila. She obviously had much more than the rest of them and when she began acting funny in the restroom, they left her. Fortunately, someone had the sense to let the principal know and he sent a female teacher in immediately. I was in the office when the principal asked the office manager to call the parents and at the time just thought that she had fainted. She is a good student with a cheerful personality and I was in shock when the teacher that was with her told me that she was drunk. I kept the hallway clear of all of the students that tried to see what was going on and what came out of the bathroom scared me. It scared me because she couldn't walk and had to be strapped onto the stretcher because she kept on trying to jump off it. It scared me because these students thought that this was ok to do during school. It scared me because they thought they were mature enough to consume at least half a bottle of cheap tequilla and then left their friend alone in an extremely dangerous situation. It scared me because I think how much things have changed since I was in high school 8 years ago and how much more they will change by the time my - yet - to - be - born children go to school. It scared me thinking of the parents who sent their kids to school in the morning, telling them to work their hardest, who had to be informed that their daughter had severe alcohol poisoning and was being taken to the hospital, unconscious. It scared me to think that for some of these kids, drinking themselves to oblivion at age 15 is their way of coping with whatever is going on their lives. In a time when the news and the politicians want to talk about everything that's wrong with education and tell us what we should do to fix it, those of us that are actually living through it know that the issues that we are dealing with go so much deeper than poor reading scores.
*I have since learned that the student was released from the hospital to her parents. The parents and the school are continuing to investigate who was involved and where the alochol came from.
