May I rest in Peace

One of the things I love about working at a high school is the daily contact with teenagers. I was far from a stellar student, a little on the wild side and certainly did not have it all together. It is no different now than it was 30 years ago, alcohol and sex are rampant in the schools. Drugs are more dangerous and more prevalent, but we had our share of 'stoners' at my high school. I can relate to a lot of these kids and there are days that I really feel like I have made a difference in a life, I love those days.

Tomorrow is our Every 15 Minutes program. It is put on every two years by the Highway Patrol in conjunction with high schools, MADD and local police. This year I was asked to be the head of the committee for our high school. For six weeks we have worked to put everything together. E15M is an alcohol awareness program, designed to help high school juniors and seniors think about drinking and driving and the consequences that could happen.

Out on the baseball fields tomorrow morning we will stage a "crash" . There will be two cars, really banged up ones that have really been in a DUI accident and in them, five students from the school. Two will be "DOA". Their parents will be notified by Brentwood police and a chaplain and they will be escorted to the funeral home to "identify" their child. One will be seriously injured and will be helicoptered to a local hospital where she will "die". Her parents will be escorted to the hospital. One will be injured and transported by ambulance to another local hospital. He will survive but will be "paralyzed". The other student is the "drunk driver". He will be "arrested" and spend the night in jail. 20 other students will be "living dead" they will form a line at one end of the field. They represent one student who dies every 15 minutes. With this statistic, we would lose 20 students during our school day. The students are all made up and the crash scene is very realistic.

The living dead will be in their classrooms when the "Grim Reaper" will come in and read their obituary and leave a flower on their desk. The obituary will be posted on the door for students all day to see. The students are sequestered after the crash at another site with 4 adults who have all kinds of team building, awareness activities, including one where they write their parents. The opening line of the letter says: "Dear Mom and Dad, every 15 minutes someone is killed in a drunk driving accident. Today I died and I didn't get to tell you....." Each student made their own tombstone which will be added to the grassy area in the quad, one every 15 minutes.

Every year 4 adults are chosen to 'die' and spend 24, (cell phone-less) hours with the kids. Tomorrow I am dieing. It was weird to see my obituary which was written by my friend, our leadership teacher, a young teacher of 29. The grim reaper will come and get me during first period, post my obit on the door and take me away. It is eerie. Wednesday there is a "funeral" with speakers, a video of all the events, (the whole thing is professionally taped, even the hospital, the funeral home etc....). It is obviously a very emotionally charged event. One of the DOA's is my Karlee, who has babysat for us, spent tons of time with our family, been in my seminary class etc...she is our ASB president and everyone knows she is as good as can be, so it will shock them to see a Mormon girl get "killed" by a drunk driver.

Since part of blogging is posterity, I wanted to include my involvement with the program. Here is my obituary. (I cut and pasted it, normally it has some other graphics, but they didn't transfer.) No blog tomorrow, I'm dead.

JENNIFER LYNN GROSECLOSE

“MRS. G.”

1959-2008

Jennifer Lynn Groseclose, Discipline Secretary at Liberty High School was killed this morning on her way to work. She was hit by a student at the school who was drunk.

Mrs. Groseclose is survived by her husband of 26 years, Byron and her five children, Rachel, Mitchell, Lauren, Jeffrey and Scotty. She also leaves behind many friends and co-workers who will miss her greatly.

Jeni was active in her church, in the community and at Liberty High School.
She had taught an early morning religion class for the past five years, something she loved doing. She also served as Parent’s Club President and School Site Chair at numerous schools as well as serving on district wide committees. Mrs. G, as she was known at Liberty, is the School Advisory chair, was the class advisor for the class of 2006, Employee of the Month six times, and headed up many committees for the school. She loved the students of Liberty High School and they loved her.

Jeni’s interests were varied. She loved being outdoors; gardening, camping, swimming were all activities she enjoyed. She also loved to travel, having gone on her dream trip to Europe last year. Jeni was also an accomplished seamstress and loved to quilt. She enjoyed cooking, reading, laughing and recently found a new hobby, blogging. Mrs. Groseclose' daughter is being married in August, she will be missed at the wedding.

“To thine own self be true…and it follows as the night does the day, thou canst be false to any man.”