Student suspended for helping fellow student during asthma attack

This seems to be a hot topic on facebook. Should a teenager have been suspended for ignoring his teacher's directions to stay seated when he helped a fellow student that was having an asthma attack. Here's a link to the story if you want to read all the details but here's the basic rundown.

Students in a Texas school are told to stay in their seats and be calm while the teacher contacted the nurse about a student that's having difficulty breathing. Apparently, the means of contacting the nurse was email, which is the real issue here, but I'll get to that later.

This young man ignored the rules, picked up the sick student and carried her to the nurses office. For these actions, he was suspended from school.

Now, on the surface you think, what a load of garbage. Why would you suspend a student for trying to help someone else. Now, let's look at the story more closely...what most of the commentors failed to do.

If you read the entire story, it indicates these students attend an "alternative" school. For those that aren't familiar, this is a school for students that had disciplinary, attendance or legal issues at their home schools are getting a chance to complete school in an alternate location instead of being expelled. Thus, these classes are often on lock down when in session and students are not allowed to walk about freely like they might be in a regular public school.

The procedures for anyone leaving a classroom during the day are pretty tight. Usually involving a police officer being called to escort the student wherever they need to go. They do not allow the students to wander the halls freely, no matter what the situation is. For this reason, this young man was suspended, even though he was performing a good deed. Unfortunately, in these types of facilities, there are far too many students that would abuse this scenario if they thought they could get away with it. Letting one student break the rules with no consequences would open the door for chaos.

Now, let's get to the real issue here. Why does this school policy include emailing the nurse if there's a medical situation? Is that the only means of contact outside the classroom? Most schools have an intercom system or phones in the classroom. Could this be more of an issue with the teacher not understanding how urgent the situation really was? There are some definite failures on the part of the teacher in this situation but she couldn't leave the class unattended and she could have been fired if she'd allowed the sick student to leave the classroom on her own.

Unfortunately, there are situations that we are often placed in where rules have to be broken but that doesn't always stop the consequences of those actions. It's part of being a human. Weighing the good against the bad and doing the right thing, even if it means getting in trouble for it. I'm glad he did what he did but, without knowing the school procedures for situations of this nature, I can only speculate on what the teacher could/should have done.

Maybe this will bring the holes in their procedure to light and future situations can be handled more appropriately.