Calif. teacher resigns after leaving family for student

this is the opening of the nyrb article:

Adults who want to have sex with children sometimes look for jobs that will make it easy. They want authority over kids, but no very onerous supervision; they also want positions that will make them seem more trustworthy than their potential accusers. Such considerations have infamously led quite a few pedophiles to sully the priesthood over the years, but the priesthood isn’t for everyone. For some people, moral authority comes less naturally than blunter, more violent kinds.

Ray Brookins worked for the Texas Youth Commission (TYC), the state’s juvenile detention agency. In October 2003, he was hired as head of security at the West Texas State School in Pyote. Like most TYC facilities, it’s a remote place. The land is flat to the horizon, scattered with slowly bobbing oil derricks, and always windy. It’s a long way from the families of most kids confined there, who tend to be urban and poor; a long way from any social services, or even the police. It must have seemed perfect to Brookins—and also to John Paul Hernandez, who was hired as the school’s principal around the same time. Almost immediately, Brookins started pulling students out of their dorms at night, long after curfew, and bringing them to the administration building. When asked why, he said it was for cleaning.

so, are there any ilxors who didn't encounter a student-molesting teacher in hs?

I don't recall any at my high school.

I would like to point out that my Spanish teacher, to my knowledge, never molested anyone or acted inappropriately with anyone who was a current student of his; I had also just turned 18 when he asked me if I wanted to get coffee sometime (I believe he was 24 at the time). So, while I definitely would call him inappropriate, I would not call him "student-molesting".

There was a math teacher in my HS who I'm pretty sure had a relationship with a 17-year-old student. I didn't really know the teacher or the student but it was something talked about and the teacher wound up leaving, so it was probably true.

Also I had a male music teacher start rubbing my shoulders in a very suggestive way and speaking to me in a hushed tone once.

It was actually a surprisingly scarring experience, although I got over it later.

Ditto with the English teacher who married his daughter's best friend; she was well out of college when that all happened.

I never knew the teacher who slept with a 15-year-old student and then claimed she had a brain tumor to deflect attention away from those allegations when people started getting suspicious.

There was also the time when one my friends happened to catch the school librarian making out with one of the English teachers in a bathroom stall but no students were involved in that. (I'm also not 100% sure it was the librarian; I do remember that one of the guys was my soccer coach.)

None at my HS.

I think the takeaway is that all schools should be burned to the ground

I've been saying that since second grade.

A coach at my hs was caught at home with a student by his wife. Fired, divorced, moved in with student...but not before the yearbooks had been printed. When they were distributed a few months later, one of the candid photos was of the coach and the student.

I had several attractive young female teachers throughout my adolescence who I could tell were totally into me, would've acted on it if we'd met under different circumstances

there were plenty of rumours and allegations about teachers among the kids at our school; none of those were actually true, it was just targeting the more eccentric-looking teachers (eg our scary latin teacher who was also the school chaplain who invariably had food stuck in his huge beard and who once scandalised parents by preaching at the school carol service that calling mary a virgin was offensive to all mothers) (in retrospect he was kind of awesome).

the two genuinely creepy teachers: 1x religious education teacher who was convicted of telephone stalking a woman (not a pupil) and left the school after that. and! the young, fit and v popular outdoor activities teacher who was also an assistant housemaster (and therefore lived on school property - with his wife and three small children) who turned out to be shagging one of the prefects in our year (we were in 6th form so i guess she'd have been 17/18). there were news crews and everything stalking the school trying to get quotes out of us, it was tremendously exciting. the teacher was instantly sacked and the prefect expelled but the prefect's ex-BFF sold her story to the tabloids because she was the kind of girl who really didn't give a fuck.

I don't think I understand more than 50% of the terms you used in that post

i once overheard one of our english teachers telling one of my classmates he was one of the best looking boys in our year (he must have been 15/16) - i didn't think this was creepy at all at the time, maybe because she was so brisk and no-nonsense despite being young and pretty herself? also because damn, she was correct on that front

I don't think I understand more than 50% of the terms you used in that post

i actually tried to make it intelligible to americans, lol

prefect = a few favoured pupils selected from each house who get extra official duties and privileges? idk exactly what they did, i wasn't one. kind of like deputies to the head boy and head girl

who once scandalised parents by preaching at the school carol service that calling mary a virgin was offensive to all mothers

Brilliant

None at our school.

head boy? head girl?

religious education?

(j/k)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Girl_and_Head_Boy

so... standard british class system nonsense

My neighbor, a HS teacher and coach, was arrested and spent time in jail for having had a sexual relationship with one his students.

i should clarify for my conscience's sake that the teacher i'm thinking of was accused of something involving a kid, not involving one of his students. we found out about it only through rumors after he had been suddenly removed. i have no idea if he was ever charged, let alone guilty. it is a possibility that it was all a mistake and his professional life was wrecked. i always kind of like the guy, he was not a popular teacher. it's a sad and sick thing whatever the truth of the matter was.

there was a slightly different and very class-based kind of thing at my HS, where a former star athlete dude there was about to graduate from college and got together with a v popular and athletic girl, when we were i think seniors in HS, so she was probably 18. they had obv known each other for much longer. pretty sure he came to prom and everyone thought it was just wonderful.

cue much grumbling from kids lower down the social totem pole for whom bringing their 22 year old BF to prom would not be met with much fairytale approval.

i lived in a vv small town which had communities on two sides of a lake with two different school districts. in the district across the lake, the principal and asst principal were busted for child molestation at the elementary school. i always wonder about shit like that, b/c like...how the hell did they ever team up? ugh. anyway, it sounded pretty terrible, to have the two biggest authority figures in a school doing that. those poor kids.

i lived in a vv small town which had communities on two sides of a lake with two different school districts.

Are you me??

was your town kind of terribly conservative and ass backwards?

if so, yes i am you~

BREAKING NEWS

yeah the thing goole brings up is a tough call ... like, we have seniors that are dating sophomores ... they go to college, and stay involved. suddenly, they're coming back for prom.

so you have a 19 y/o man-child going to prom with a 16 y/o girl. is this okay? it's a question we've struggled with!

My best friend was dating a 30 year old dude when she was 18...and I don't remember thinking it was weird until a lot later.

When she was in HS, I mean

there was a lot of stuff in HS that seemed normal at the time that retrospectively looks a little "off"...i knew juniors in HS who were hooking up w/8th graders.

o_O

how old is a 'Junior'? I still get confused with US high school terminology

Junior = 16-17
eighth grade = 13-14

my lake had four sides.

ty

there was a lot of stuff in HS that seemed normal at the time that retrospectively looks a little "off"...i knew juniors in HS who were hooking up w/8th graders.

― omar little, Friday, March 2, 2012 2:20 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think to some degree almost everyone has a bit of an ~~~age ain't nothin but a number baby~~~ mentality until they hit 18, if not later

this is sort of a no-brainer but people under 18 are not very good judges of what is normal or appropriate, hence things like voting age, drinking age, age of consent, etc

went to two different high schools and there were crepey teachers at both. The one at the first school was eventually arrested after we'd moved to school #2. At the second one, the teacher was fired for an "unrelated" reason (though I later wondered about that; he was pretty brazen). That guy was very popular with the students--he was "cool" and very politically liberal for a high school in Georgia--and they rallied around him as a kind of free speech martyr, assuming the administration canned him for being too much of a rebel.

xpost i mean obv the same goes for people over 18 too but for teenagers its basically a rule of thumb that if you don't give them *explicit* advice on what is appropriate/safe you might as well tell them to flip a coin.

when i was 16/17/18 it didn't seem odd at all that some of my peers were dating older dudes. when i was 22+ myself it seemed super-odd that any of my peers would do that (like beyond randomly hooking up w/someone at a club or sth)

i think when i was of HS age it seemed normal to know peers who were dating someone in their early twenties but once i hit early twenties and knew dudes who did that they were always regarded as being a little creepy by *their* peers.

this is sort of a no-brainer but people under 18 are not very good judges of what is normal or appropriate, hence things like voting age, drinking age, age of consent, etc

― the late great, Friday, March 2, 2012 2:25 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is there some kind of weird filter on my posts itt that makes people think i am giving a huge approving thumbs-up to anything i describe?

I think you might be switched to i100percentendorsethisposition.css

I think a lot of people would disagree w/ the voting age and drinking age and even age of consent