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

[Deberg_1990]

Can you really stop true love?


http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headline...ormer-teacher/



An angry California mother is alleging abuse now that her 18-year-old daughter is living with her former high school teacher, who left his wife and children to move into an apartment with the young woman.

James Hooker, 41, quit his job after going public with his love for Jordan Powers, who stopped attending classes at her Modesto high school and left home to be with her former business teacher.

The girl’s mother is skeptical of the couple’s claims that nothing sexual happened between them, and exactly when the relationship became physical has become the center of a police investigation.

“She looked up to him,” mom Tammie Powers said. “[He was in the] position of an educator, [and you] don’t abuse your student. Period. She’s still in high school. She still lives at home. She has a curfew. … That’s not OK.”

The couple maintains that their feelings for each other blossomed slowly by spending time together during and after school, and then via phone calls and text messages. The two first met when Jordan was a high school freshman at James Enochs High School, but they say they only developed romantic feelings after she turned 18 in September.

“[He's] my best friend. I mean, he’s more than just a lover,” Jordan Powers said of Hooker, who has a daughter a year younger than her and attended the same high school.

Hooker said that while Jordan Powers was a student in his business class, he didn’t think twice about her. “She was just a student,” he said. “There was no attraction. There was nothing that was out of the ordinary, as opposed to any other student. We were very much a teacher-student role.”

Tammie Powers is unconvinced. As soon as she discovered a long log of text message exchanges, she went straight to the police. She waged her own war on Facebook, posting a letter that went viral telling everyone that classmates took photos of her daughter sitting on Hooker’s lap when she was still his student.

She says that she also discovered 8,000 text messages between the two, along with late-night phone calls and email exchanges that took place when she was still a minor.

“That’s pursuit, in my opinion, with some type of intent,” she told ABC News 10 in California.

But none of the late-night calls or endless texts were a red flag of inappropriateness to him, and says that people looking for proof of an unacceptable relationship before Jordan was 18 are just inquisitive about their connection, Hooker said.

“I think that they’re just digging for something that wasn’t there. I mean, of course, they’re going to be curious,” Hooker added. “But I know for a fact that there was nothing.”

Although Jordan has stopped attending classes, she is now doing independent study through the school and plans to walk at her graduation.

Hooker confirmed that he is under investigation by the Modesto Police Department, but is confident he will be completely cleared of any allegations of inappropriate behavior. He said that he understands that people don’t understand their relationship.

“I think the stigma of the teacher-student relationship just makes it messy, makes it really hard for people to get through to the point that we really do like each other, he said. “We really do want to have a future together.”




http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/29/430...gns-after.html

[T-post Tom]

[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?

[listopencil]

Still no FaceBook page? Do I have to go to 4Chan?

[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.

[Disgruntled_Parent via SR's IP in GA]

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

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OH - MY - GOD!!!! This is exactly why i do home schooling. This is SICK!

[RockChalk]

http://gma.yahoo.com/california-teen...-abc-news.html

[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.

[Lonewolf Ed]

Originally Posted by listopencil

He'll die of a heart attack banging a 28 year old woman when he's 51.

That sure beats getting eaten by a grizzly or struck by lightning!

[Chief3188]

Yeah this will work out. By the time she is completely bored and wanting to go out and live her life he will be wanting to grab a movie from redbox and drink an ensure.

[loochy]

Originally Posted by Simpler Red

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

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OH - MY - GOD!!!! This is exactly why i do home schooling. This is SICK!

Who ARE you?

[loochy]

Originally Posted by Simpler Red

This is exactly why i do home schooling.

Why? So you can sleep with your own kid? Now THAT'S sick.

[listopencil]

Originally Posted by loochy

Why? So you can sleep with your own kid? Now THAT'S sick.

Why cross the street when you can go down the hallway?

[loochy]

Originally Posted by listopencil

Why cross the street when you can go down the hallway?

Because the hallway stinks from when I took a dump earlier.

[alnorth]

Originally Posted by Simpler Red

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

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OH - MY - GOD!!!! This is exactly why i do home schooling. This is SICK!

This is not a reason to home school. If your local schools suck, you cant move to a better school district, and you've got a really good local home school network with other people who are knowledgeable about teaching subjects that you aren't, and you have access to after-school activities and sports, etc so the kids emotional growth isn't stunted, then that might be a good reason.

This incident is so incredibly rare, as in it happened in Modesto, CA and that becomes a big national story type of exceedingly rare, that you'd be better off being worried every day that your kids might get struck by lightning or eaten by sharks.

[BIG_DADDY]

Originally Posted by Simpler Red

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

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OH - MY - GOD!!!! This is exactly why i do home schooling. This is SICK!

Um, ok.
If you haven't raised your child correctly by this point it's over anyway.