Not selling my body for books yet!

From http://news.yahoo.com/shock-claim-40-000-public-school-teachers-moonlight-133404548.html:

Shock claim: 40,000 public school teachers moonlight on sugar-daddy website

The Daily Caller

21 hours ago  EducationMedia

Believe it when The Daily Caller tells you: If you find any fault with public school teachers, you will definitely hear about how very hard they work, and how they care so much about making the world a better place.

The Daily Caller now has evidence that the many spirited defenders of the old profession of teaching are right in many exciting, stimulating ways.

SeekingArrangement.com, which bills itself as “the #1 online dating website for sugar babies and generous men,” is now boasting that some 40,000 public school teachers of a certain moral caliber have joined the website in an attempt to sell sexual services seek wealthy, older men for “mutually beneficial relationships.”

In a press release, SeekingArrangement’s CEO suggests that teachers on the website are responding conventionally to diminished budgets, overcrowded classrooms and, of course, the perpetual need for school supplies.

“You can’t expect a teacher to accept less pay for more work than their peers, and then reach into their pockets to fund your child’s classroom,” declared Brandon Wade, the website’s founder and CEO. “But that’s what’s happening. If those are the expectations and pressures we are putting on our teachers in America, than they can’t possibly be judged for whatever extracurricular activities they choose to pursue to stay afloat.”

According to SeekingArrangement, the top five school districts in the country for sugar-baby teachers are (in order): the School District of Philadelphia, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Los Angeles Unified School District, the Clark County School District (in the Las Vegas area) and the New York City public schools.

Data is self-reported by the women who use the site when they initially sign up.

“Based on the occupation field ‘teacher,’ we polled members to see which school districts they worked in,” explained Jennifer Gwynn, SeekingArrangement’s public relations manager, in an email to The Daily Caller.

Eduhonesty: I’m sympathetic to these teachers. I commonly spend over $500 of my own money for my classroom each year. I work in a poor district where supplies are scarce. Some years, I may have spent over $1,000 in ink cartridges, pencils, Clorox wipes, emergency breakfast food, bags of candy for bingo prizes, etc. Random shopping stops just come with the territory. But the part where we start selling our bodies to buy sets of “To Kill a Mockingbird” seems like it might be just one or two steps over the line.

Ummm…Can I start robbing banks? Maybe the science department could brew brandy like monks from the middle ages. Microbrews are another strong possibility. The radio jingle might go something like this:

(chorus)
District Seven Ale, me lads, District Seven Ale,
The finest drink that any bar has ever had for sale,
It’ll lay your whole damn world to waste, it’ll make you fit and hale,
There’s nothing that you’ll ever taste like District Seven Ale, me lads,
District Seven Ale.

(If you want to see the original song, go to http://www.tomsmithonline.com/lyrics/307_ale.htm. You can also find Tom Smith on youtube and he sells some of the best music for geeks ever.)

For that matter, how about selling marijuana — for medicinal purposes, of course — at PTA functions?  The ubiquitous weird red punch could be paired with $5 brownies and other green, leafy pastries. Meetings might be a lot less contentious, while attendance would probably skyrocket.

It’s not the 1800s and teachers are held to looser standards today than ever before, but where do we draw the line? I found this article funny but the concept’s also disturbing. I’m not too badly paid, thanks to a ridiculous amount of formal education, but I can see where some of my new colleagues with a bachelor’s degree might be struggling to keep themselves in Clorox wipes. Still…