Serious Teacher loses appeal to return to teaching because of history in pornography

If we lived in a perfect world, her past as a porn star wouldn't affect her ability to teach, but the fact of the matter is that's not true. Having suffered through too many classrooms where the teacher can't control the students I can say it is HELL and even though the teachers did nothing wrong in those scenarios, teaching was sure as hell not the right job for them!

How in the hell does her past occupation affect her ability to teach a classroom subject? Having sex with two men at once does not automatically make you forget what you know about Science. You act as if her doing this before actually ruined her brain and caused her to suddenly be a bad human being incapable of teaching others.
 
her ability to teach is affected by more than her own intelligence and knowledge. i thought that was explicit in the post you quoted, actually
 
And chiming in to say that it should never be forgotten / completely forgiven. Truthfully once a whore, always a whore. A woman who has been with many men will never be loved / accepted by someone their equal. A woman could be near perfect for you but if they have been with too many men, she is far less valuble and most men would prefer to claim their parter / love someone that not everyone has already had. Investing so much time / love in something that will cum to you or any man so easily anyways isn't really logical. Someone lesser than them would still value them in spite of this because the whore that they could never have now would love someone like them.

all that 'ascended consciousness' and pineal gland protection and you're still such a fucking child
 
Nah WB, the idea is that 13 year olds are inherently misogynists and idiots so they can't be held responsible for sexually harassing someone or being dickheads or defacing school property. If you're 13, you shouldn't be punished! The teacher should be punished for making you do those things in the first place. She forced them into it with her dirty slut whore past, you see. Except it's not really a punishment, it's just firing her for "not doing her job" and negating all of her college education because now she's never going to get another teaching job again due to the media attention. Totally not a punishment.

It's totally different with people who have a disability, because they didn't choose that and therefore kids will understand and not be little arseholes to them, making teaching totally Fine. Kids only act up when you choose to do something that may be socially unacceptable. If the kids found out a teacher had an abortion and used that against her, well, I'm afraid she'd have to be let go. Thems the breaks, people! Don't do things that kids aren't accepting of, ever, or you'll have to be fired.
 
Okay elcheeso-- here's another illustration.

You walk into an elementary school 2nd grade classroom in a Micky Mouse costume and talking like Micky Mouse. You then tell them to pull out their math books and work on arithmetic problems.

Do you, or do you not, think you are impairing the effectiveness of the lesson? (you're impairing it)

Is this, or is it not, the fault of the kids? (it's not)


Of course those students who defaced property or harassed the teacher need to be disciplined. However, you cannot expect 13 year olds to be anything but 13 year olds.
 
Nah WB, the idea is that 13 year olds are inherently misogynists and idiots so they can't be held responsible for sexually harassing someone or being dickheads or defacing school property. If you're 13, you shouldn't be punished! The teacher should be punished for making you do those things in the first place. She forced them into it with her dirty slut whore past, you see. Except it's not really a punishment, it's just firing her for "not doing her job" and negating all of her college education because now she's never going to get another teaching job again due to the media attention. Totally not a punishment.

It's totally different with people who have a disability, because they didn't choose that and therefore kids will understand and not be little arseholes to them, making teaching totally Fine. Kids only act up when you choose to do something that may be socially unacceptable. If the kids found out a teacher had an abortion and used that against her, well, I'm afraid she'd have to be let go. Thems the breaks, people! Don't do things that kids aren't accepting of, ever, or you'll have to be fired.

Because the teacher is the only victim in this scenario ._.

Look believe it or not not EVERY kid was being a little shit I guarantee, and forcing those kids who weren't being little shits to sit through all of that is straight inhumane. I had the same history teacher two years in a row who had absolutely no control over her class. In the middle of "class," kids would hide or destroy my notebooks and papers, literally cause me physical injury, etc. During tests, kids discussed the answers. All this while the teacher sat on and watched. The end result was that the class was more an exercise in being an absolute ass than anything and no history was learned for two years.

Coming at this issue with that experience under my belt, I find it inexcusable that people are willing to let the good kids suffer so that this woman can keep a job she is /clearly/ not performing to adequate levels - because let's face it, pornos or no pornos if classroom discipline is as bad as they say it was in the article then you are not fostering an environment in which anybody is going to learn. The fact that this only happened because some asshole kid dug up her past sucks. The fact that this is smeared all over the news so she will have a tough time in her future career sucks. I agree that some parents need to have tighter discpline over their kids, and even that the troublemaking kids in the article must be punished. But the long and short of it is school is an institution for the kids, not the teachers, and if the kids are being poorly served by keeping this teacher around - her fault or not - then she should be fired. I stand by the school board on this one.
 
I don't know if comparing something you can't change without a time machine to a costume that can be taken off at any time is really appropriate at all. I don't expect 13 year olds to be not-13, I just expect them to be held responsible when they're fucking up the effectiveness of a lesson. I'd expect a bit of rowdy bullshit from 7-8 year olds faced with Mickey Mouse as a teacher, but if it continued after the first 5 or so minutes, yeah, I'd expect them to be disciplined for it. Again though, not really comparable because you can take a costume off and stop doing a silly voice at any time.

And Pwnemon, the only thing directly in the article about her classroom is that a couple of kids were cat calling in the back. For all we know, it's just a few kids, they were getting disciplined for it but the other teachers showing the admins the porn were solely responsible for getting her fired. Saying she couldn't keep control of her class is about as vague as saying she's a bad role model, it could mean that the entire class was terrible, half the class, or just a small number and it's just an excuse to fire her.

I've been in that same situation with shitty kids distracting the hell out of everyone and the teacher not doing shit about it, but the reality is that we don't know all that much about this situation. There isn't really anything suggesting that she was just sitting back and being like "la la la, wow I sure do love being called by my porn name by little kids" or whatever. Maybe TheValkyries could give some more insight, but by the sounds of it, she wasn't a terrible teacher who was incapable of controlling a classroom. Different situations! In your case, lots of kids being assholes + teacher who doesn't care to discipline, in this case, a few to all kids being assholes? + teacher who may or may not care to discipline? Who the fuck knows!

Edit: Also worth noting that she was in no way fired for not disciplining her class. She was fired purely because of her past in porn, otherwise it wouldn't have been necessary for the other teachers to show admin her videos!
 
I agree with the part kids doing kids stuff, but I think the main problem for the school would be the parents. The school would have much trouble with the parents close minded, I can bet that, if she stayed at the school, wouldn't take long to some parents start to say that the school has a prostitute (even if she just did some movies, historys gets bigger quickly), giving it bad reputation. That would affect every employer in the school. That could be unfair, but as they are humans as well they though in the worst scenary right away.

I'm new here so I don't know who have kids here, but would be good have a father/mother opinion here too.
 
Taking a costume on or off has nothing to do with the analogy. The whole point is that if an environment isn't conducive to study, you are doing students a disservice. Trying to teach math in a Micky Mouse costume is in-conducive, just as teaching students who have seen you have sex for money on camera, apparently.
 
yes, phil, i was being facetious. i haven't watched any of said videos, so i wasn't commenting on the actual content of what occurs, rather the opinion most people have assumed about the entire ordeal.

on the contrary though, if you're going to portray yourself as mickey mouse and try and teach math, aren't kids (that age of adoring mickey mouse/his counterparts) going to stand at attention and totally obey their idol and fictional god? i'm of course exaggerating a little bit with titles, but if most childish cartoons these days (and forever??) have meant to teach kids good values with cute characters and innocent anecdotes, i don't see why portraying such a character "in real life" would have a negative effect. i mean, depending on the grade, some students are going to not take a person in a cartoon costume seriously, but stick that same person in front of a bunch of 2nd graders, and they'll likely turn into pudding, eager to learn whatever their mickey mouse is there to possibly teach them.

i'm mostly playing devil's advocate now, but that analogy otherwise is kind of stupid.
 
Coming at this issue with that experience under my belt, I find it inexcusable that people are willing to let the good kids suffer so that this woman can keep a job she is /clearly/ not performing to adequate levels - because let's face it, pornos or no pornos if classroom discipline is as bad as they say it was in the article then you are not fostering an environment in which anybody is going to learn. The fact that this only happened because some asshole kid dug up her past sucks. The fact that this is smeared all over the news so she will have a tough time in her future career sucks. I agree that some parents need to have tighter discpline over their kids, and even that the troublemaking kids in the article must be punished. But the long and short of it is school is an institution for the kids, not the teachers, and if the kids are being poorly served by keeping this teacher around - her fault or not - then she should be fired. I stand by the school board on this one.

Why do people do this? When they have experienced a similar issue to a current event in their heads they make it the SAME EXACT issue. I'm sorry you had a bad teacher but there is no evidence that this lady was actually a bad teacher.

The best guess is that she was a good teacher for several years and then some students and staff found out she used to be a porn star made her life hell and then the school fired her and blamed it on her losing the respect of her students and colleagues.
 
The part that really bugs me is the fact that a three-person panel of judges came up with this decision. As a one-handed movement by a district judge I could see this kind of decision happening, but not a panel of three people.

This whole issue is circumventing one major point as well: was Halas's teaching actually impaired at any point?

Yeah evidence was brought up that kids were cat calling, etc. But that's nothing to say that they were being any more distracting than usual. As a teacher she's still the authoritarian, if the class was getting rowdy disciplinary actions should have occurred.

Something tells me that this isn't an issue of her teaching being hampered at all, but an overreaction by parents hearing the news from their children that attended the school.

So then the real issue is, why was this an issue? The only difference between pornography and your regular romantic comedy nowadays (No Strings Attached or Good Luck Chuck anyone?) is the cum shot and production value. You can't tell me that pornography is the straw that breaks the camel's back in our society, or that it's the worst moral fiber plaguing us. The best part is, it's fucking legal.

So what's wrong with pornography and how is it in any way an indicator of who someone is as a person? How is this still an issue?

This whole thing hits me deep as a future educator, especially as a gay one. Not too long ago homosexuals couldn't teach for basically the same reasons those judges gave to support their decision! My whole future can also be ripped right out from under me just as it was for this poor teacher in almost the exact same way, and I've done nothing "wrong".

Sorry if I'm a little preachy but, ugh, now I'm just frustrated.
 
i'm mostly playing devil's advocate now, but that analogy otherwise is kind of stupid.

Then fill in your own example where the identity of the teacher, or other element of the classroom environment is incondusive to teaching and you have the same point.
 
i'm mostly playing devil's advocate now, but that analogy otherwise is kind of stupid.
I thought it's the perfect analogy on the situation. In another perspective, why would a society trust somebody on Mickey Mouse costume nor somebody they saw on porn movies teach the kids, the teens or whoever...
 
Then fill in your own example where the identity of the teacher, or other element of the classroom environment is incondusive to teaching and you have the same point.
The IDENTITY of the teacher, and any woman really, is not "porn star." That is not who she is. That is what she did at a period in her life when she felt she had no other option to gain the money she needed.
Nor is her past decision an ELEMENT of the CLASSROOM. It did not happen in the classroom, it was not told by her in the classroom, she did not make it a matter in the classroom, students found it on their own.
Your example is flawed because a teacher coming into the room dressed as something being considered unprofessional and not commanding respect is making the choice on how they are actively walking into that room and presenting themself to the students. This woman did not make an active choice to alert her students she got banged for cash while a camera was rolling.

This whole excusing of the students in her classroom for catcalling and making you scrubs act like she had 0 control whatsoever over her classroom is stupid beyond all belief. Is there no discipline system at this school? Students do not NEED an actual reason to harass a teacher, be disruptive in class, or otherwise hamper the learning environment. If they are going to be obnoxious little brats they will do it. Saying that her porn career is the REASON for their crippling stupidity is just plain false, it's merely the excuse they are using to be disruptive snots and act disrespectful while thinking they have a justification for it.

If the school's larger authorities did not discipline these students properly for their actions then fire the principal too since s/he's clearly not doing their job, or not capable of enacting a proper punishment.

The misogyny in this thread and the justifications for 'comparisons' to explain how this woman was somehow actively detracting from her own classroom is just pathetic because of how hard those who are sitting around herping in their misogyny are trying to act like they aren't. Just because you did not make a post like Logan's which is clearly trolling/just sad does not mean your views of women, their actions, and who to 'blame' and where to put responsibility aren't also problematic.

I do not agree with pornography, I don't like it, I don't think it's ever respectable to resort to, I hold no respect for male and female porn participants or those in the industry who produce porn.

However, this woman made an unfortunate choice in the past which she has clearly chosen to not take any part of in her current life. It was not her telling her students WATCH MY PUSSY GET SLAMMED, it was a discovery they made which then became a big issue because LOL SEX also her fellow teachers seem to be the biggest busybody snoops.

IMO she'd be better off moving to a more liberal state/area where she could possibly get a teaching job where it wouldn't be so critical if her porn career was discovered, however, being in the news like this might just make her sour milk for teaching at all now? Depends.

If you want to make an actual example of "has a teacher's action made them ineligible to teach/command respect in their classroom," you should try "this teacher was smoking weed and getting high on X drug here in the 80s, they stopped and moved on from that, some kid finds old pictures of them getting high, are they now not allowed to teach/do they not command respect/can they not have changed their mind or taken a different perspective and point of view towards it/should the kids yelling SMOKE WEED 420 YOLO HUFF PUFF not get punished while we put the blame on the teacher being unable to 'control the classroom' when it seems like there was no support for this teacher in their authority system."

Consider.
 
The mickey mouse example is extremely overt, both visual and auditory, and is intentionally being created by the teacher.

The former pornstar example is not overt, certainly not auditory or visual, and is not being intentionally caused by the teacher. This distraction is created by the kids in the class, not the teacher.

You're really trying to tell me these two are equivalent? Come on man, I know you're better than that.

Also this teacher was in fine control of her classroom up until the point people found out about her past, and suddenly all hell breaks loose. Isn't that a testament to her teaching ability in itself? Keeping control of a middle school classroom is hard enough even if you're perfect. If she was doing fine before, obviously she's not a bad teacher. It pains me to see people in positions of authority being so ignorant and reactionary in cases like these...
 
Keeping control of a middle school classroom is hard enough even if you're perfect. If she was doing fine before, obviously she's not a bad teacher. It pains me to see people in positions of authority being so ignorant and reactionary in cases like these...

Exactly. And now that they know she's been involved in pornography, she's going to have a harder time controlling the class.

What elcheeso and others are missing is that it is the responsibility of the teacher to control the class, not the responsibility of the children. 13 years olds aren't 100% mature all the time, especially not in school, and to expect all of them to take the information like it's nothing is ludicrous. Kids will make a big deal of having a pornstar as a teacher. There's no way in hell they'd be able to focus and this is understandable.
I agree that the distraction is created by the class, but the teacher needs the ability to destroy said distraction. This is now impossible for that teacher. Her ability to do her job has been seriously impaired by the revealing of this information. Now that this is out, she can never do her job as successfully ever again.

What should have happened is she disclosed it to the school and made it harder for people to gain access to her videos. There would be no problem if none of the children had found out.

There's nothing ethically wrong with what she did, but, on a practical level, she's not going to be a successful teacher anytime soon. Sadly her stint in porn has harmed her career. The board could have dealt with this in a far more respectful manner, though.

@Solace: what exactly did she expect if a pupil learned of her pornography? How is referring to her by her porn name sexual harassment? That's what she, you know, called herself. Please please please remember kids are in school to be taught, not all of them inherently have an ability to control themselves/know exactly what is right in a given scenario/deal with the knowledge their teacher did porn. 'Rights' of kids to be assholes to teachers has nothing to do with it.
 
verbatim said:
Am I the only one somewhat disturbed by the fact that the district clearly glossed over the fact that the middle schoolers were trying to watch porn on school computers.

Yes, it's very disturbing indeed, but it's part of the bigger problem of people being unable to set priorities that make sense because morals/immaturity got in the way. It's the hypocrisy of letting kids / teens / young adults make stupid mistakes but punishing adults for making arguably stupid mistakes as young adults. Putting kids under such a different standard from someone who was, at the time, only a few years older, is not just an assault on the teacher. It's also a degradation of the students. They're treated like products made in a factory, sheltered from all the responsibility of thinking for themselves until some arbitrarily defined age. It's not just the teacher, but also the students who deserve better than this.

Hell, even the "hey she used to bang dudes for cash but look at where her life is now" angle could have been used. This is why I cannot buy this excuse for firing her. It's the typical twisting of a potential success story into a tool for judging and punishing others for arbitrary reasons and hiding it under the veil of pragmatism.

I'm not suggesting that we should just punish the kids or their parents or whoever like other people are saying. I would really just like situations like this to be a learning opportunity. She is a science teacher, which to me puts that much more emphasis on shattering misconceptions and getting at the real heart of the matter. I'm not saying that the typical school can afford to have full-blown Mean Girls moments, but it seems like people aren't even making the slightest amount of effort to change the general attitude toward people like Halen. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way. Why is it that people cannot conceive of the idea of having everyone share responsibility for their education, instead of expecting the adult in the room to take it all on? When will we stop employing this horrible double standard?

If nothing else, Halen should have been transferred to a more manageable position, or allowed to quit by herself. Imposing this on her is just going to cause more unnecessary damage to her.

Oglemi, Solace and WaterBomb said everything else I would have wanted to say. Also elcheeso.
 
The excuse that it's not the children's responsibility to act mature in such a situation is quite frankly ridiculous. Assuming the teacher is doing the job up to a decent standard, such harassment should not be tolerated, whatever the reason might be.

To put it in a different light, what if the teacher had no links to porn, but instead, had some sort of mental or physical impairment which didn't affect their job, was non-heterosexual or simply had a weird accent, anything which doesn't really have any effect on their job performance and but is something that middle schoolers can and will make fun of, and they were fired because of it? Would you still say the teacher should have been fired, rather than the schoolchildren being disciplined?
 
The excuse that it's not the children's responsibility to act mature in such a situation is quite frankly ridiculous. Assuming the teacher is doing the job up to a decent standard, such harassment should not be tolerated, whatever the reason might be.

To put it in a different light, what if the teacher had no links to porn, but instead, had some sort of mental or physical impairment which didn't affect their job, was non-heterosexual or simply had a weird accent, anything which doesn't really have any effect on their job performance and but is something that middle schoolers can and will make fun of, and they were fired because of it? Would you still say the teacher should have been fired, rather than the schoolchildren being disciplined?

Your entire post has been brought up already lol. The difference is that she made a choice to go into porn which the media/parents frown upon. The people you listed have no choice in their disability/orientation/foreign background, so I think in those cases the media/school would side with them and discipline the children. Well, except for maybe the accent, depending on how bad it is. I mean, if the kids can't even understand what their teacher is saying because their accent is too thick then should they be allowed to teach? Seems stupid to me. As long as it doesn't impair their teaching it should be all good.

Also, I brought it up before but I had an English teacher with a disability, and he was one of the most respected teachers in my school, simply because he was a great teacher. I also had a real bitch of a teacher, and we would go out of our way to make her life miserable. Ended up giving her a nervous breakdown. So ultimately it depends on if the teacher is a dick/bitch or not. I'm not saying this teacher was, all I've said all along is that it was a dumb fucking decision to go into porn, just flip burgers for fucks sakes, or get a student loan. She might be a retard, but she has no disability.
 
The mickey mouse example is extremely overt, both visual and auditory, and is intentionally being created by the teacher.

The former pornstar example is not overt, certainly not auditory or visual, and is not being intentionally caused by the teacher. This distraction is created by the kids in the class, not the teacher.

You're really trying to tell me these two are equivalent? Come on man, I know you're better than that.

You (and others) are missing the point by getting caught up in trivial differences between the MMouse exp and this case. My point is that it possible for aspects of the classroom environment (and this includes aspects about the teacher) to be detrimental to learning such that the poor classroom environment cannot be accounted to the students' fault; especially when it's something the school can easily fix (in this case by removing the teacher).

If I wanted, I could compare this to trying to study with no AC in 100 degree weather. Hell, I know for me, 12-year-old-me, raging hormones/newly arrived sex drive were harder to control (and harder with excessive stimula) than a little heat. Hey, there's the stem of one reason for another classroom environment decision: dress codes.

You don't need me to make up some example that you may or may try to disregard due to superficial differences (and fuck, it's an illustration, of course it's different), but the point stands. I'm sure you can think of your own example that fits and still makes my point.

I simply can't believe the blatant disregard in this thread for the rights/needs of students who have are having their studies hindered through no fault of their own (especially those who have not acted out, and students of the future). For those in the thread who wish to be educators, and those who really care about education-- remember that a school exists for the children, and their learning.
 
Your entire post has been brought up already lol. The difference is that she made a choice to go into porn which the media/parents frown upon. The people you listed have no choice in their disability/orientation/foreign background, so I think in those cases the media/school would side with them and discipline the children.

I understand the comparison wasn't perfect, but I fail to see how that really affects the case - whether by choice or not, it is still something that technically wouldn't affect the teacher's ability to teach, but will likely bring out negative behaviour from the students.

While you could argue about the decision itself being wrong, I don't think why it should even be brought up - it was something perfectly legal for her to do and I don't think in any way it suggests her inability to teach.
 
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