At some point folks, this has to stop.This time it's an English teacher in the Rittman Schools. Erin Speicher, 34, resigned Friday after the allegations surfaced involving alleged sexual relationships with Rittman students in Orrville, where she lives.
I spoke to Rittman's Superintendent, Jon Ritchie, about the allegations, and he was obviously just disappointed that it came to this.
While he couldn't talk about the details of the allegations, he told me Rittman High's enrollment is 425, so it's a school that's small enough that everyone knows this teacher. So everyone is talking about it. And every parent has concerns now.
Speicher's not only taught Freshman English, she also served as the Junior Class Advisor. In other words, she was in a position of real influence over so many young minds.
Who doesn't remember your 9th grade English teacher?
Right now, Speicher is facing a single felony count of Sexual Battery .. but more charges could follow as the Orrville Police Press release indicates there were "multiple alleged incidents" and that more than one high school student was involved. She was arraigned today and pleaded not guilty.
Here's a woman who spent 12 years in this school district, and according to the Superintendent, had no blemishes in her past. Now this?
Are we really to believe that no one else had any idea that she might have been engaging in relationships that crossed the line? No students suspected anything? No parents? No fellow teachers? I would hope that if anyone suspected something that they reported it.
Maybe the only thing that went right in this mess is that the school district immediately called police and let them handle the investigation. You don't have to look back very far to see other local districts who tried to handle these types of allegations "in-house" only to have it backfire.
I hate these cases .. not just for the students (the real victims here) but because it gives a black eye to every other teacher out there busting their butts to educate our kids. Teachers who now face additional scrutiny from curious parents who wonder, "I wonder if she/he is behaving correctly around my son/daughter?"
Thoughts?
5 comments:
Eric, whenever I read stories such as this, I wonder about all those teaching positions I applied for but didn't even get so much as an interview. This lady did get the job, and look at how she squandered her priveledge and tarnished her profession, also hurting the good hard working men and women who know how to keep their personal lives out of the classroom. I am a teacher myself but don't teach right now. Maybe I have to become a pervert or something to get a job these days or something?
I believe a Mr. Roth said it best when he sang, "I've got it bad, got it bad, got it bad ... I'm .."
Oh shoot ... that's not the point i meant to make. :)
Le SIGH...why does it seem like the people guiding our youth these days are all going down the crapper? It seems like I've heard about nothing when it comes to education other than there being a hoard of teachers engaging in inappropriate behavior with kids these days, and I am so sick of it. It makes it worse that this woman had no past issues or problems. I mean, it's one thing where the teacher has a bad or previously tarnished past that the school didn't look in to or drag up out of laziness or neglect, but when a seemingly good teacher goes off the deep end and does something like this? Where does it stop? And what are we supposed to do about it?
Home schooling is starting to sound more and more appealing...
"why does it seem like the people guiding our youth these days are all going down the crapper? It seems like I've heard about nothing when it comes to education other than there being a hoard of teachers engaging in inappropriate behavior with kids these days, and I am so sick of it."
You're blowing the issue way, way out of proportion. How many people teach high school on a daily basis in Akron and how many of these stories have broken? Further, how many people teach high school nationwide and how many teachers have been caught?
According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are well over one million people working as secondary school teachers (not counting vocational or special education). Yet, we're talking a handful of these cases nationwide.
The moral outrage is unjustified and should be reserved for the state of our education funding, not sexually abusive teachers.
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