Teaching gets a black eye

News that a teacher in Area 3 has been charged with having sexual relations with a student is unsettling. The female middle school teacher, according to the sheriff's office, had sex with a 14-year-old male student at school, at her home, in her vehicle and at hotel rooms.

She was jailed after her arrest and has been placed on administrative leave from her teaching position pending the outcome of legal action.

If the charges are proven to be true, this is a violation of the very foundation of teacher-student trust. Educators are to be mentors, instructors, guides, coaches, counselors for their students. Personal attachments are destructive of the educational process.

Not only has this incident damaged the reputation of the teacher involved, it casts a pall over the entire education fraternity. Ninety-nine-plus percent of our educators care about the development and educational growth of their students. They are following a calling to help young people. It is a slap at their collective face to have the name "teacher" associated with such actions.

Our faith remains firm in the confidence we have in the overwhelming majority of our teachers. But as the old saying goes, it takes just one bad apple to ruin the whole barrel.