Texas Middle School Teacher Resigns After Experiment Injures Boy

A little known fact about me...

Way back in high school, I burned a few eyebrow hairs on my lab partner. It was in the chemistry lab and I didn't realize that I had dialed up the gas into the Bunsen burner a little too high before I tried to light it with that spark contraption.  Thankfully, she was okay.  Oh, did I mention she was my girlfriend at the time?

Anyway, I bring up that story not to rehash old reasons as to why my girlfriend may have broken up with me, but to illustrate that accidents can happen at school, especially in the science lab.  One recent middle school lab accident has led to the resignation of a Texas teacher.

According to a report, a 37-year-old teacher at Granbury Middle School was conducting an experiment in which she put hand sanitizer on a student's hand and then set the sanitizer on fire. Apparently, she had tried this with several students with no issues, however, in this one case, a 12-year-old suffered possible third-degree burns on his hands. Granbury, by the way, is about 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

Granbury ISD made the following statement on the district's Facebook page:

A Granbury Middle School teacher has resigned and is no longer an employee of the school district. This follows a student injury on Friday during a science class experiment. Campus officials have turned this matter over to law enforcement and proper authorities for further investigation.

I've seen this type of experiment before, but certainly not in a classroom setting.  Usually, the hand sanitizer is squirted onto a surface and then set on fire.  A person will then scoop the flaming sanitizer onto their fingertips and watch it burn for a few seconds before extinguishing the fire with a nearby bowl of water.

That being said, DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS. Placing a burning flame on human skin is never a good thing. Another piece of advice --- never choose your boyfriend or girlfriend as your lab partner.