Student Murdered
More Teacher/Student Sex
By Daniel Muniz

Debra Flynn has every right to be very upset at educators, especially with young attractive females who are restless with their marriages. Her 18 year old son, Sean Powell, was in the midst of a steamy illicit affair with his 30 year old married teacher, Erin McLean. McLean was participating in a one year teaching internship at West High School located in Knoxville Tennessee which is where she met Sean Powell. Powell was a troubled kid himself and eventually left school shortly after the school year began for a substance abuse problem.

Although a number of people had already known about this seamy affair, it was the discovery of McLean’s husband Eric that irrevocably changed everything.

Eric McLean worked hard to support his wife and family. And just as what any family man would do, he put his career on the backburner for his wife and kids. He even took a part time job delivering pizzas while taking college classes for a bachelor's degree in music education. Although he also played in local rock bands, he only needed one more semester to graduate so he could pursue his ambition to become a band director for a school.

But every man has a breaking point and McLean certainly reached his after learning that his teacher wife of 11 years was romantically involved with a high school dropout.

Eric McLean confronted Sean Powell with a shotgun and shot him dead.

Extramarital affairs happen every day and a handful of them do end up in a tragic outcome like this. However, what makes this scenario so seedy is that it occurred under the auspices of a school. The press is already saturating us with these sordid tabloid stories all the time and the more attractive the female teacher is then the more national media attention it is going to get. Although popular culture loves these squalid stories, an outcome ending in murder reminds us that these events are not just guilty pleasures that society likes to indulge in but a harsh reality of love gone awry.

But even so, what Erin McLean did while as a teacher and what faculty members across the country are doing is wrong.

And there indeed is a lot more is involved than a desperate married educator taking her clothes off and getting into bed with a consenting adolescent. Although there is a perverse allure of an attractive female teacher getting naked with a male student, this act represents the ultimate betrayal of our education system. Educators are supposed to be impartial instructors and role models to our impressionable youth. And more importantly, parents are entrusting their children with the faculty and staff and of a school district.

But the moment that a female teacher starts having sex with a student the impartiality and trust that the public expects from the education system comes to an abrupt end. And as Sean Powell’s mother alluded to, this is becoming more commonplace and it is time for schools and society to do something about it.

First, society has a double standard which is blatantly unfair. A male teacher doing the exact same thing with a teenage girl would have tremendous repercussions but a female teacher oftentimes only gets a slap on the wrist. Part of the problem is society’s own proclivities about this. They simply view it not only as a consensual act but as prized behavior in which the boy deserves a high-five for what he got out of it.

In fact, there are many parents who are ridiculed by the local community when they do bring this up to the authorities and to school administrators because society tends to think that nothing wrong really happened. However, when roles are reversed and it was a male teacher who did it to a teenage girl, there is outrage in the community and rightly so. Cultural norms have to be altered so that society is no longer permissive over this type of behavior.

And that also brings up the accountability of parents. Unfortunately, Sean’s mother, Debra Flynn also knew of the affair while it was underway. Parents cannot be hapless spectators when this sort of thing happens regardless of how popular culture views it because their own child could be in danger as in this case. Even though such incidents are becoming commonplace, parents should not expect that the “system” is going to solve all of their problems. They have to get involved in the process so that it does not spiral out of control.

Of course, part of the problem lies in the public school system. It is not enough to bury these policies in a handbook or expect faculty and staff to exercise common sense and good judgment in this day and age; schools ought to be explicit and unambiguous when it comes to teachers having sex with students. Additionally, these messages have to be reinforced at regular intervals with their consequences bluntly spelled out.

Furthermore, our education bureaucracy and the teacher unions have to come to grips with the reality of needing to immediately fire child molesters instead of protecting them. Although there needs to be safeguards in place to protect anyone from being falsely accused, once sexual activity has been confirmed, there is absolutely no reason for an educator to be on paid administrative leave while their case goes through the court system.

School districts also need to be up front with young educators and especially with universities in explaining what their expectations are supposed to be. Teaching is unlike any other profession in which values actually play a significant role in their jobs therefore colleges need to take a bigger role in explaining that to their education majors.

And finally, teachers have to grow up, especially since the bad apples are giving the good ones a bad reputation. Teaching is indeed a serious profession and an enormous responsibility so it has to be treated as such. Although what an educator does in privacy is their business, it becomes everybody’s business when it involves a student.

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