Susan Sherrard is the adviser for The Central Times and teaches junior English. By sharing her thoughts with students and staff, she hopes to encourage both students and faculty to write to The Central Times staff with their own perspectives on school-related issues (and more). Email [email protected] or fill out a “Rant, Rave, Ramble” form, located outside room 110 or available HERE.

Since the Overdose Simulation was presented on Oct. 30, I have kept reflecting on its impact. I want to share some thoughts with the student body.

As a 30-year teacher who likes to ask students about their thoughts on various topics, I have discovered over the years that some students don’t feel that the adults in their lives truly care about them. Maybe they feel that classroom and school-wide activities don’t meet their needs. Maybe they feel that their parents are distracted at home. Maybe they think that everything adults ask them to do is intended to punish them and make them miserable.

What you sometimes don’t realize is that everything we do as educators is because we care about you. Sometimes, educators feel alone in this endeavor, dispensing all of our energy on our students’ unique needs while also trying to figure out what those needs are.

The simulation on Oct. 30 was an example of the love that an entire community has for its teens. 

Think about the fact that Brendan Chaney and Mandy Sanders from your Youth Services Center staff, along with staff from Baptist Health Hardin, Elizabethtown Police Department, Hardin County Coroner’s Office, and Lincoln Trail Health Department all collaborated to plan an effective way to reach you on the dangers of taking unprescribed drugs. They spent hours on top of their usual job responsibilities to customize a presentation that they hoped and prayed would allow them to never deal with another overdose tragedy again.

Concern about drug use among teens is nothing new. Adults from all walks of life have tried to figure out the best ways to truly drive home the message of the dangers of drugs. They’ve tried the DARE program, guest speakers, videos, etc. The simulation was an excellent effort toward getting the message to “sink in,” and I want our students to realize it.

The variety of presentation tactics created an opportunity for some part of the message to “hit home” with every student, and I hope it did. If you were not moved by the role-play of an unconscious teenager and his devastated mother, then maybe the straight talk from the panel of experts resonated with you. If not that, then surely Angelina Mykytiuk’s testimony about her brother Andrew drove the message home.

As the expert from Lincoln Trail Health Department explained, the brain is not fully developed until age 25, which may mean that you are just not ready to take the information seriously. I hope that’s not the case. I hope that you are mature enough at your age to understand each message that was intended for you on that day. 

If nothing else, you should know that you don’t just have one or two adults who care about you. You have an entire community.