“How do you put on a tourniquet?”
That question from a 13-year-old student at Mississauga’s Erin Mills Middle School unfurled a controversy over a grade eight drama assignment.
Delight Greenidge’s son asked his mom that question when he got home from school one day last week.
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Asking her own set of questions, she discovered her son and six classmates were assigned to create a skit involving the making and taking of meth. There was even a detailed, two-page set of instructions on how to do both.
The guidelines that seem printed straight from the Internet include necessary equipment like needles, a syringe and spoon. They also walk the user through wiping their arm down with alcohol, tying it off, finding a vein, pushing the plunger and the proper disposal of the needle.
“(My son’s) part of the assignment was the injecting,” says Greenidge, tears welling in her eyes.
“You teach your kids not to have any association with drugs on any level. We don’t talk about drugs in our household.”
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Greenidge reported the assignment to the Peel District School Board who have suspended the teacher in question with pay pending an investigation.
“Certainly, we share the same concerns that the parents have about this particular assignment,” says Board spokesperson Carla Pereira.
“I can’t speculate on what (the teacher) was intending.”
Discipline against the teacher could range from special boundary training to outright dismissal.
Sources close to the situation say he’s very well liked by students at the middle school because of his tendency to think outside the box on assignments. That makes no difference to Greenidge.
“If he doesn’t know better, then he needs to be retrained. And if he can’t be retrained, then get him out of the system!”