Out of Pod Experience

When was the last time you worked around teenagers? I did not say seduced. I imply blackmail. A teenager can be sexually attracted to an adult. Ask any educator in a juvenile detention center how devious this 'kids' are and what they, the teachers, are actually allowed to bring into the facility. Remember these kids used to be in regular schools.

I can easily ignore advances from juveniles and have been doing it for close to 2 decades, but if you cross paths with one of the sick/criminally minded kids you are screwed, pun intended, at the accusation. Any guy that would go to his administration with complaints of a student making advances is already in the hot seat and at risk of losing their job, and again if you do not think so I am not sure what else to say.

Also, with the connected nature of our population you should not be surprised how many teachers are in regular contact with their students via, Facebook, twitter, and any of the other social apps outside of school hours. I see and hear it all the time from good and solid students. The problem is worse with students with less than stellar raising's or mental health issues. If you have friends that are teachers you should talk with them about how things are. they may startle you a bit.

I do not disagree one iota. But here is a little story about what happened to me in grad school. As a graduate assistant ATC I was in the training room and one of my female tennis players entered the training room for treatment after I had sent the rest of my women and the other team out to the courts. I had about 15 minutes of work left before I went out to the courts. I had been treating this particular female athlete for a strained hamstring for about a week and a half. Against all I have ever been told, I rushed the heat pack to her let her heat for 10 minutes and then proceeded to stretch her hamstring, as I do with every other male and female athlete with the same condition. She was the #2 player on the team and the team needed her to operate optimally and I had no support to call on as it was early Saturday morning and no other ATC was on campus (love staffing issues!)

A week later I get called into the office of the Head ATC, who was a lesbian and in the office was the assistant who was the head trainer's significant other. They notified me that the currently aforementioned athlete was accusing me of sexual harassment. Luckily for me my head and assistant ATC's knew my ethics and they did their homework. They had found that she had caused problems of this sort at two other colleges prior to coming to our institution. The instructed me to be much more careful and to never allow myself to be alone in the training room with only one athlete at any time, no matter the athlete nor the treatment...which is nearly impossible if you know anything about the job I do.

The problem is a teacher, male or female can be framed almost instantly with today's technology, hence why I said I would never be caught dead working in a high school.

Also, I agree that a teacher should not be having conversations with underage students after hours but that does not change the evolution that is social communications. I would wager that a very large percentage of high school students have communications with at least one of their teachers after hours. They have been working with teachers after hours for decades in year book staff, athletics, marching band, drama etc... all of which probably have all of their students contact info and vice versa, just based on potential emergency situation that arise during travel etc.

P.S. We do not know anything about what was contained in the texts. It could be that the mentioned student was top of her class and she is there because the teachers she has are available at all hours of the day for questions etc.