Job Discussion Forums

[Cobra]

Count your blessings.

It could have been a drawing of you dismembered and all bloddy and yucky!

[Celeste]

C76-

I think we've all been there. When I taught at an ESL school in Vancouver, I could spot the dreamy look in the eyes of some of my students and think "oh god...this is going to be uncomfortable".

ESL students get crushes on their teachers all the time. One of the reasons that I think this happens is because their teacher is the only person in their new country who makes the effort to understand them, listens with great interest to everything they say, and tries to draw them out of their shell- kind of like your ideal first date for a lot of people. My strategy in dealing with smitten students was to hook them up with groups of other students to socialize with. (I was the activities coordinator at my school, so this was very easy for me to do.) I am sad to say that I have worked with teachers (male and female) who have taken advantage of these student crushes, and gone on to have short lived flings with these students. In most of the cases that I know of, this has led to great heartbreak for the student, and not much in the way of consequences for the teacher.

[Capergirl]

[C76]