I know you will think I am a creep/pervert/a****** for this. But I have to get this off of my chest. I suspect I may not be the only person like this…

I am a teacher (male). One of my students (female) has no friends in the class. She’s done this to herself with her “goth” or “dark” attitude. She has no father, and her mother is busy trying to raise her other, younger children. In other words, this girl craves attention from adults. Preferably adult males.

This is my second year as her teacher. Since this new year began, this student has been staring at me a lot in class. Even when she’s supposed to be working, she will stare at me. The stories she writes in her daily classroom journal have all turned to stories about older men and younger women. I KNOW she likes me. It’s normal for girls her age and in her situation to like older, established men. We represent safety and attention.

No, I would never do anything with her. And unless she actually says she likes me, I can’t do anything about it.

But, part of me likes the attention. It makes me feel like a young man again. The kind of feeling you get when you are still a teenager and you know someone likes you. When you get older, you don’t get that same kind of feeling when you’re in a relationship. But she’s giving me that feeling.

And I find myself stringing her along with it too. Whenever she shares her work with the class, I make sure I clap extra loud for her. I write extra comments on her papers about how good a writer she is, to boost her ego. I smile at her when she smiles at me. I make it a point to ask her and only her how her weekend was.