Texas Grade-School Teacher Admits Getting High on Meth Before Teaching

Okay, teachers, we get it. Facing that room full of little hyperactive booger-eating grade schoolers isn’t easy. Sometimes it downright sucks.

But do you think you need to use meth before you face the enemy? A North Texas teacher does.

Vickie Bruce was released from jail on $25,000 bond Sunday after admitting to authorities that she’d been using methamphetamine in the mornings before class for the past seven years. She’s facing charges of possession of a controlled substance in a drug-free zone, so she wasn’t just waking and baking at home, but she took it to school, too. Investigators with the Texas Rangers say she kept her meth wrapped in tin foil in a photo album she carried in her purse.

According to an arrest record, Bruce admitted she used meth “before going to work for the last seven years, off and on.”

Bruce won’t have to worry about facing the kids without hitting some meth first, at least for a while. School officials put her on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. She’d been teaching third grade students at an elementary school in Springtown, located about 25 miles away from Fort Worth.

When detectives first questioned her, the meth was in her car, parked at the school parking lot, said Wise County, Texas Sheriff David Walker. She turned herself in when she was told of her warrant.

“It enhances the penalty. In the warrant affidavit it will show possession of methamphetamine, possession of a controlled substance in a drug-free zone.”

Her former students and their parents were shocked when they heard she was teaching while she was high. One fourth grader said he remembered her giving a “stay clean” speech.

“We had a no drug poster. She said don’t do drugs. It’s bad for your system and if you do you’ll get caught.”