President Barack Obama honored 2014 National Teacher of the Year Sean McComb during a White House ceremony on Thursday.
In his remarks about McComb, a Baltimore, Md. high school English teacher, Obama took the opportunity to praise every member of the teaching profession.
“To all the teachers who are out there, and the millions who are working hard in classrooms all across our nation, we want to thank you,” the president said. “You’re doing the Lord’s work.”
As we all know, however, the Lord works in mysterious ways. His work can sometimes seem to vex everyone—especially when it comes to these 11 teachers.
Cristy Nicole Deweese, a high school Spanish teacher in Dallas, Texas, was fired in October after students figured out she had once posed gloriously nude as Playboy’s “Coed of the Month.” “That’s my Spanish teacher!!!” reads a representative comment under a YouTube clip featuring DeWeese. In Playboy’s online videos and photos, Deweese goes by the much sexier name, Cristy Nicole. She had just turned 18 when she removed her clothes for the illustrious men’s magazine in February 2011. (RELATED: Hasta La Vista, Baby: High School Spanish Teacher Who Posed For Playboy Now Sacked)
Only last week, prosecutors in Houston, Texas charged middle school teacher Felicia Smith because she gave a full-on lap dance to a boy for his birthday in front of an entire class in February. According to a police report, Smith, 42, did the thing where she turned around and swiveled her butt on the student. She rubbed him with her hands. She also got down on her knees and stuck her head between the boy’s legs. The incident lasted a little over three-and-a-half minutes—presumably the duration of the song chosen for the special occasion. At the end, Smith allegedly hugged the boy and told him, “I love you, baby. Happy birthday.” (RELATED: Middle School Teacher Provides ‘Full-Contact’ Lap Dance In Front Of Class For Birthday Boy)
In January, in Walpole, Mass., Norfolk County Agricultural High School teacher Marc Mertz allegedly ambled down his snow-covered driveway to his mailbox wearing only a ski hat, ski goggles and a towel. Then, police say, Mertz dropped the towel and began thrusting his hips in the direction of the mailbox. (RELATED: High School Teacher Arrested For Dry Humping His Mailbox In The Nude)
Olivia Sprauer, formerly a freshman English teacher, got her 15 minutes of fame in December when she was featured on the March 2014 cover of Hustler magazine. Inside the magazine, there is a 14-page photo spread of Sprauer showing her junk—under the far sexier model name Victoria V. James. The cover promises “EXCLUSIVE PINK!” and “NAKED PAYBACK.” Other promised pieces involve comedian Margaret Cho’s “freaky SEX secrets.” (RELATED: Former Freshman English Teacher Graces The Cover Of Hustler)
In an utterly predictable plot twist, Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy teacher Jamie Climie ended up admitting that she didn’t really lose her cellphone like she claimed she did after raunchy nude photos of her showed up on a “revenge porn” website in November. Climie, who is married and has children, went to the local police and reported her iPhone 4S missing. She swore up and down that she had sent the taboo photos to just one person: her husband. Police fairly quickly established that Climie had sent at least one photo to someone who wasn’t her husband. (RELATED: Teacher At Christian School Lied To Cops About Phone Containing ‘Revenge Porn’ Photos)
Travis Lechien, a chemistry teacher at Hanover Central High School in the Chicago exurbs of northwest Indiana, was fired and criminally charged in October because he allegedly ferried a group of students to a strip club and had often given them beer and hard liquor inside his home. According to court documents, things went south for Lechien, then 32, when police pulled his car over for speeding one particular night. Inside the car were some students he had taken to a local strip club. The occasion for the strip club visit was a student’s birthday. (RELATED: High School Teacher Fired Just Because He Took Students To Strip Club)
Greg Abernathy and Connie Lambert, a pair of teachers at Olive Branch High School in Olive Branch, Miss. decided to twerk in front of a classroom full of students. At least one student whipped out a camera and began filming for posterity. That video then became a local viral sensation. Abernathy is bent over in front, gleefully throwing his ass around. Lambert is behind him, waving her hands in the air like she just doesn’t care. In an especially brilliant flourish, Abernathy and Lambert said they performed the crude dance because they wanted to warn students about what it looks like when people dance crudely. (RELATED: Of Course Teachers Are Twerking In Class Now)
Meredith Powell, a 24-year-old math teacher at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Wash., stands accused of engaging in oral sex and other sexual acts behind the locked door of her classroom with a few different male high school students. The charges against the young math teacher began piling up back in February. Powell’s interactions with the students allegedly featured bad porn dialogue. For example, according to court documents, an unidentified male student told Powell he would do anything to increase his math grade. “You’ll do anything?” Powell allegedly asked. “Anything,” the teenager repeated. With that, the high schooler said, she reached over to unzip his pants and grabbed his penis. (RELATED: Behind The Math Class Door: High School Teacher Admits To Classroom Sex With Two Students)
Brad Guyton Mims, a guidance counselor at a school in Okeechobee County, Fla., was arrested in February on a bevy of impressive charges. Initially, a 15-year-old female student complained that Mims, 47, spent way too much time ogling her breasts. He also hit her up on Facebook. The local sheriff initiated a sting operation that resulted in the counselor sending penis images to a cop. When police paid a visit to Mims’s house, they found 17 crack pipes, 5 grams of crack cocaine and 10 images of apparently underage girls. There was also a bong, a trio of pistols, a camcorder and some sexual aids. (RELATED: Crack-Smoking, Breast-Ogling School Counselor Tried To Send Penis Pics To Underage Student)
In February, an unidentified eighth grade English teacher at South Florida’s Charter School of Boynton Beach was suspended for assigning the lyrics of a raunchy, f-bomb-filled song by rapper Lil Wayne as required homework. The teacher printed out the lyrics of the song “Six Foot Seven Foot” on sheets of paper for the eighth graders, asking students to underline instances of figurative language. Such language includes phrases such as “two bitches at the same time” and “I fuck her like I missed her.” As a result of the kerfuffle, Lil Wayne later felt compelled to advise teachers to avoid using the rhymes he busts as a teaching tool. (RELATED: Lil Wayne Reminds America’s Teachers Not To Use His Lyrics In Junior High Classrooms)
In December, James Lang, a former English teacher at Fords Middle School in Woodbridge Township, N.J., lost an appeal to get his job back. Lang was fired for – among much else – repeatedly hitting on a French teacher, calling one female student a “dirty ho” and “Jo-Jo the Ho-Ho” and informing another female student that would “tap that” as she was leaning down to pick up some paper. (RELATED: Middle School Teacher Sacked For Calling Student ‘Dirty Ho,’ Telling Girl He’d ‘Tap That’)
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