According to reports, a schoolteacher in Canada is responsible for the latest in a series of strange but true news stories related to methamphetamine use. The unidentified instructor at Erin Mills Middle School in Mississauga, Ontario has been suspended with pay after providing students with an instruction sheet on how to make and abuse crystal meth. Delight Greenidge shared her reaction with Lisa Xing in a CBC News report after her 13-year-old son brought the instructions home as part of an assignment for his eighth grade drama class.
“It’s mind-boggling,” Greenidge told CBC News. “It could undo a lot of what I taught him because sometimes he would think the things the teacher says are sometimes more important than the things mum says. They do have that influence and impact.”
According to Greenidge, students were originally tasked with using emotions to make a skit about an old television show. After the skit was scrapped, Greenidge says the teacher suggested her son and his group use a skit about crystal meth.
Instructions Greenidge provided show detailed steps, such as feeling around for a vein and wiping the injection site to prevent bacteria. According to Greenidge’s son, who asked not to be identified, the assignment asked students to "act scared" when pretending to make the drug and "act happy" while injecting it.
While the story of a teacher schooling a student in the ways of manufacturing crystal meth conjures up memories of the AMC series Breaking Bad, the Peel District School Board doesn’t appear to be amused.
“I can’t speak to his rationale for doing that,” communications manager Carla told CBC News. “We share the parents’ concerns around that particular assignment.”
The teacher will remain on suspension with pay while an investigation is being conducted.
