So, HCPS made the decision to make all schools smoke free, but did they consider the consequences?
Having been a smoker since I was 15 - when it was legal, encouraged, allowed in pretty much every venue on the planet - there is NO WAY I can accept this decision with absolutely no notice, no alternative, no remedy. In high school, we had a smoking lounge for students. In college, we could smoke in class and ashtrays were provided. When I started teaching, students still had a smoking area, and teachers were allowed to smoke in the teacher's lounge adjacent to the office where we made copies and drank coffee. We could smoke in our classrooms after school. Then at some time in the 1980s, we were relegated to another teachers' lounge further from our classrooms, then outside where a lean-to was built to shield us from the rain. Then to the loading dock. I didn't like it, but I complied with the directives.
For 42 years I have smoked cigarettes. What used to cost 25 cents a pack is now almost $5.00. I have known for quite a while that it is not healthy for me and I didn't care. I still don't - only because I have tried on numerous occasions to quit for other people, and I have been unsuccessful at quitting. I have been hypnotized, patched, gummed, electrified, taxed, and drugged. None of these methods have worked for me. I find smoking to be cathartic and calming. It may stink, be expensive, and now that it is unfashionable, I still don't care.
Everybody needs a vice. Mine are wine and cigarettes and attitude, not necessarily in that order. So there.
Adults drink and drive, choose not to do the right thing, and a litany of other bad deeds - for which they may or may not be punished. But none of them cost them their job when they are really good at it.
I happen to be really good at being a teacher of newspaper and yearbook, and I have my successes at being an English teacher too. But my chosen profession has been stressful, as have my life experiences been equally stressful. I find smoking cigarettes to level the stress, to make it possible to carry on despite the unusual circumstances I find myself. And it makes it possible and tolerable to fulfill the objectives - for myself and for my students.
So in my final days and hours of being a teacher, they want to tell me I can't be the person that I am - and I won't accept that.
I will continue to be a smoker until I decide not to.
I will fight the inevitable fight.
I will win.
Don't argue with me about this - I know what I know, and it is wrong to tell someone AFTER they signed a contract under certain terms that they can't do something they have been encouraged to do for 42 years.
Get real.
