a grave injustice

The interesting thing is that the teacher had tenure. We can fire teachers over personal past history within weeks, but it takes years to fire a teacher with tenure over professional competence.

I have two master's degrees, five years' experience in the nonprofit sector and three years' experience teaching -- and I cannot get a job. Why? Just google me. I'm the "Hooker Teacher" -- at least that's what I've come to be called ever since Sept. 27, 2010, when I found myself on the cover of the New York Post.

"Meet Melissa Petro," the story began," the teacher who gives a new twist to sex ed." The piece describes me as a "tattooed former hooker and stripper" who was "shockingly upfront about her past." Indeed, earlier that month, I'd written an Op-Ed on the Huffington Post that criticized the recent censoring of the adult services section of Craigslist and came clean about my own sex-worker past. Because I was arguing that sex workers shouldn't be ashamed to speak for themselves, I signed my name to it. The New York Post wasn't interested in my politics, however; its interest seemed only in cooking up shock that an elementary school teacher would dare admit such a shady history.

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/05/04/hooker_teacher_what_i_was_thinking/index.html

I mean I wouldn't have minded her as a teacher I think. She had clearly separated her private past from her public present.

My country's elections are finally over; so the NY Post's reporting-with-an-agenda-to-destroy now really sickens me. More than a teacher's hooker past.