California Teacher, 41 resigns after leaving wife, kids for student, 18

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by frazod

This may be legal, but it is definitely ****ed up and deeply wrong. People like cops, coaches and teachers who have positions of authority over children and abuse them for their own sexual gratification should be held to a higher standard.

The standard I have in mind would leave them publicly twitching at the end of a rope.

I definitely agree in theory that you have to keep a distance, but I've always wondered about teachers' situations and how difficult it is over the course of a career. More so at the college level, but I guess at the upper high school level as well.

You're a teacher who teaches 3 courses, and there are 10 females in each course. You get to know them over the course of 16 weeks or so. Now multiply this by 3 semesters a year over the course of a 30-year teaching career.

You've now gotten the opportunity to meet and know almost 3,000 young women. If you ascribe to the theory that there's not just one woman in the world for every man and that (for example) 1 percent of women are good marriage material for you, the odds are pretty good that you'll see 30 women over the course of that career that you fall in love with during those 16 weeks. It doesn't seem infeasible that sparks could ignite.

The numbers are different for high school, but the theory's the same. I wonder how many high school teachers and college professors, if being completely honest, would tell you that they've had a crush on X number of students in their career, even if the majority never act on it.

In my grad school, two professors ended up marrying students in my class, plus or minus a year. It was minorly scandalous, particularly since one of them had been married, but life went on for them.

cdcox, what say you?

[T-post Tom]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I definitely agree in theory that you have to keep a distance, but I've always wondered about teachers' situations and how difficult it is over the course of a career. More so at the college level, but I guess at the upper high school level as well.

You're a teacher who teaches 3 courses, and there are 10 females in each course. You get to know them over the course of 16 weeks or so. Now multiply this by 3 semesters a year over the course of a 30-year teaching career.

You've now gotten the opportunity to meet and know almost 3,000 young women. If you ascribe to the theory that there's not just one woman in the world for every man and that (for example) 1 percent of women are good marriage material for you, the odds are pretty good that you'll see 30 women over the course of that career that you fall in love with during those 16 weeks. It doesn't seem infeasible that sparks could ignite.

The numbers are different for high school, but the theory's the same. I wonder how many high school teachers and college professors, if being completely honest, would tell you that they've had a crush on X number of students in their career, even if the majority never act on it.

In my grad school, two professors ended up marrying students in my class, plus or minus a year. It was minorly scandalous, particularly since one of them had been married, but life went on for them.

cdcox, what say you?

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

cdcox, what say you?

In terms of attraction, college professors are people, just like everyone else.

Personally, I'm not interested in a relationship or having sex with anyone other than my wife. If you're not looking, the screwy human biology stuff is manageable.

In general, faculty members tend to be logical thinkers that can consider options very carefully. In most cases, faculty members have a spouse, children, a house, a very secure and decent paying job, and a retirement plan. An affair with a student would put all of that at risk.

I know of a few cases of faculty members that have developed medium or long term relationships with students, but it's relatively rare. The divorce rate among my colleagues is far lower than the general population, and I can't think of a single case that I am familiar with where it was due to an affair with a student. My detection abilities aren't sensitive enough to pick up on one night stands, but I guess they happen. We're pretty boring, actually.

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by cdcox

In terms of attraction, college professors are people, just like everyone else.

Personally, I'm not interested in a relationship or having sex with anyone other than my wife. If you're not looking, the screwy human biology stuff is manageable.

This, this, and this. I'm not a 16-year old dumbass controlled by my dick and hormones any longer. It's fairly easy to just not let your mind go there and not allow yourself to get into any situations like this. I will say that, as a result of this sort of thing and the fact that I work with a lot of teenage girls, I'm probably move open and closer with my male students than my female (not that there aren't plenty of instances of same-sex scandal as well). But I'm just more comfortable being "friendly" with my male students than female, preferring to keep my female students at a greater distance. I feel sort of bad about that and wonder if they're missing out on something as a result, but it's just not worth it to me.

[DJay23]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I definitely agree in theory that you have to keep a distance, but I've always wondered about teachers' situations and how difficult it is over the course of a career. More so at the college level, but I guess at the upper high school level as well.

You're a teacher who teaches 3 courses, and there are 10 females in each course. You get to know them over the course of 16 weeks or so. Now multiply this by 3 semesters a year over the course of a 30-year teaching career.

You've now gotten the opportunity to meet and know almost 3,000 young women. If you ascribe to the theory that there's not just one woman in the world for every man and that (for example) 1 percent of women are good marriage material for you, the odds are pretty good that you'll see 30 women over the course of that career that you fall in love with during those 16 weeks. It doesn't seem infeasible that sparks could ignite.

The numbers are different for high school, but the theory's the same. I wonder how many high school teachers and college professors, if being completely honest, would tell you that they've had a crush on X number of students in their career, even if the majority never act on it.

In my grad school, two professors ended up marrying students in my class, plus or minus a year. It was minorly scandalous, particularly since one of them had been married, but life went on for them.

cdcox, what say you?

The guy I took over for when I got my teaching job married one of his former students...middle school students. I had found a letter when I was cleaning out his desk drawers (he retired suddenly due to health issues before I got the job) from her concerning his divorce from his first wife and how she had always been fond of him. I'm certain everything was legal and their contact was well after she got out of high school because people would have said something if there was inappropriateness. The concensus was that he was pretty creepy. A colleague of mine had him as a teacher when she went to school there and she told me once that the girls all wore skirts or low cut shirts on test days so they would get a good grade.