100 Words About:

Recently it was revealed that a tenth-grade teacher in Pennsylvania writes erotica on the side.

Now she's looking at losing her job, or at best having to choose between teaching and writing.

Seriously, WTF people? She's been described even by her detractors as "a top-of-the-line teacher." You'd rather get rid of a top-rate teacher than possibly have a frank discussion with your kid about erotic fiction?

What she does on her own time is none of your business. If she writes under a pseudonym and doesn't discuss her work in the classroom, what is your problem? Do you think tenth graders don't know about sex yet? (If so, you're doing your kids a serious disservice.)

One comment from an offended parent said, "Now my son knows, so how is he thinking when he's sitting in her class knowing what she does on the side."

First off, do you expect your kid to be sitting in class thinking about the fact that all their teachers who have kids had sex at some point? Besides, you have a tenth-grade boy. He's going to be thinking about sex all the time anyway. (Don't believe me? Read Angela's Ashes.)

Hell, one of the books I had to read in my ninth-grade English class was Fade by Robert Cormier. That's a book that deals with inappropriate relations between an aunt and nephew, and incest between a brother and sister. That was far more messed up than finding out one of my teachers wrote erotica would be.

(And see, I turned out fine...oh, wait, I turned out to be an erotica writer. Um. But I'm willing to bet the rest of my class didn't. So there.)

Yes, this touches a nerve for me. A couple of nerves, given the systematic attacks on public-school teachers across our nation lately. (Public-school educated and proud of it!)

Of course, I wouldn't care if it turned out my kid's teacher was a stripper on the side, so maybe I'm already going to have a hard time seeing eye-to-eye with these folks.