Originally published at: California teacher charged after allegedly driving to school and teaching class drunk | Boing Boing
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Hey at least she showed up.
Work ethic.
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I mean, we’ve all WANTED to.
/s
Addiction to alcohol is a disease like any other addiction.
I feel for her, because it got in the way of doing something she loves
(and you HAVE to love teaching to do it at all)
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Hey, at least she was wearing pants!
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I know a teacher, who helped another teacher move out of her room because she was retiring. She found multiple empty booze bottles in the kindergarten teacher office. Classy!
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California teacher charged after allegedly driving to school and teaching class drunk
Well, she may or may not have driven to school, but who is the class drunk and what did they need to be taught about?
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It’s very Soberist to assume she has the same faculties as you…
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Getting old. Can’t help comparing stories like this to what it was like 50 years ago.
Alcoholism seemed common amongst teachers. Never had a teacher turn up to class drunk. There were a few alcoholics who would sometimes turn up hungover, but that was rare. More commonly, they just didn’t turn up. The Year 12 farewell was held at a venue next door to a pub. Apparently a couple of teachers were given the task of being at the pub for the hour prior to the farewell to ensure students weren’t loading up before the farewell, and one of those teachers got drunk. Dementia seemed to be a bigger problem than alcoholism. The alcoholics could have periods of sobriety, but the dementia cases were consistently useless in the classroom. The surprising thing to me was that the other teachers would usually try to cover for these cases. I guess they remembered a time when those teachers were reliable and didn’t want to admit they no longer were.
From my very limited contacts at the chalkface, apparently schools do now do better at weeding out the problem cases, but have little interest or success with getting them assistance with the underlying problem.
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As someone whose entire career involved teaching kids in the toughest areas of Manchester, UK, I can fully understand her need for a ‘morning bracer’ though I never did that myself. (Having said that, in my first year of teaching, along with three other newbies, the school caretaker/janitor/custodian? would occasionally hand us a cup of tea or coffee as we entered the school building to which she had added a healthy slug of whiskey. Kind of surprising because on a teacher’s pay I couldn’t have afforded to buy a bottle of spirits. God bless her.)
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Title is unclear. Were they drunk before or after they got to the school?
I remember one who turned up drunk quite regularly. His drinking was an open secret - everyone knew.
One day, in the name of science, the students sitting in the front row started slowly swaying on their seats, in unison. The poor bugger had to sit down, and was visibly shaken. We all thought it would be funny, but I felt quite ashamed when he reacted how he did. I think it was my first glimpse at drinking that wasn’t enjoyable - I could see that this guy wasn’t happy, at all.
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Well that’s the thing, I think. It may seem hilarious when a teacher tries to teach while drunk, but let’s not forget how crapified the job has become. More and more students packed into worse and worse classrooms with fewer and fewer supplies and older and older textbooks, which students are less and less willing to read. All for a salary that hasn’t kept pace with inflation in decades, while dealing with parents who increasingly think of teachers as an enemy who’s trying to harm their children.
I mean yeah, some drink too much, but some are doing so in response to stress, depression and despair. Laughing at this or that drunken teacher is a callous way of joining in on the undeserved chorus of derision that also helps drive some teachers to drink.
Teachers are by and large heroes just for taking on the job in the first place. They deserve our sympathy and appreciation, not heartless finger wagging.
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To me, this seems like a byproduct of our hyper-individualistic society, where far too many of us dismiss the systems we live in and how they shape our actions/behaviors.
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A friend was previously married to a functional alcoholic who routinely went to school drunk, and often stoned. Out of curiosity, I read his reviews on a rate my professor site. They tended to describe him as laid back and chill, but, not drunk. It’s possible his students kept it on the down low so he didn’t get in trouble.
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I remember in High school, a few friends and I snuck out of the school at lunch to blaze a joint in a nearby laneway.
As we were sparking up we noticed a Maths teacher, a Geography teacher, an Art teacher and an English teacher sitting very very still in a very smoke filled car.
In that moment an understanding was reached and the remainder of high school was a little more chill for us.
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I’m sure it probably happened from time to time back then too but we didn’t have social media or 24 hour news networks to turn it into a national story.
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