So I go to Google News, and I type in "teacher" as a search term. The top six stories are:

Three Teens Plead Guilty to Plotting to Kill Middle School Teacher

Teacher Accused of Viewing Porn in Class

Teacher Accused of Sex With Students

McKinley Students Accused of Trying to Poison Male Teacher (this is not the same murder plot as the one cited in the first story--that one involved a gun)

Death of Elderly Somner Co. Teacher Ruled Homicide

Music Teacher Faces Sex Abuse Charges (this is not the same teacher sex abuse case cited above--this one does not involve the teacher's students, but does involve child porn)

I hate to think what I would have pulled up if I had actually been looking for teacher-centered crime.

In teaching high school English for the last six years, the theme of the (potentially hostile) randomness of life comes up frequently in various works.

I don't know how I can teach, discuss, and even believe this theme and yet still not have it register on my daily "real life."

Then the theme intrudes.

I think teachers shut out the noise of headlines like the ones you cite. What else can you do? But, the edge is always close. And it's never the one you're looking out for.

I don't know how many stories such as these are sensational or true. But any real trouble I've ever been threatened with has always been out-of-left-field, and ludicrous except for the dangerous seriousness with which others might treat it.

Today, a student who wasn't even mine was in my room when I returned from the hall. He was holding a copy of the book "Nigger" by Randall Kennedy. He is a black junior. He got the book from my personal bookshelf. It was mixed in with a bunch of my books.

The book isn't in my curriculum. Heck, I haven't even read it. It's a loner from a colleague from last year. We had been discussing teaching issues related to racial epithets in To Kill a Mockingbird and Huck Finn.

I briefly addressed:
A. What was he doing in my room?
B. What was he doing going through my personal property?

But of course mostly I was angry at the idea of having to defend myself, and to go into an explanation of what the book was about.

For all I know, the school will get a call tomorrow from his mother complaining about me as a racist. Hopefully not.

I am disgusted with being the victim of student's "projections". It's only happened one other time (not race related), but it was serious, and enough to wonder about how much baggage you are taking on in this profession.

Friends in other professions say similar things can happen at any job, but I am not so sure.

I love teaching, but am worried about the increasing craziness quotient.

Borderliner, there's a dangling participle in your first sentence. I point this out only because you say you're a high school English teacher and would presumably want to know.

Google has a bias in its search method, because it will put at the front of the list the most-visited sites. Teachers and sex, or just the allegation, will fascinate many people, who will read the article in the link. With a US population of 300 million, even the most randomly bizarre allegations will pop up every once in a while, and people will rush to read about them. What the Google listing does is confirm this -- I'm not sure there's anything sinister there!

John,
I did mangle the first sentence. Thanks for pointing it out.

"[Google] will put at the front of the list the most-visited sites"

This is not true. Reader behavior has nothing to do with Google rankings. Google does not track how often a site is visited; in fact, this would be impossible without access to all the server logs in the world, something no technology would be able to pull off. Instead, Google tracks how many other sites link to a particular site.
[http://www.google.com/technology/index.html]

As for Google News, it "relies in a similar fashion on the editorial judgment of online news organizations to determine which stories are most deserving of inclusion and prominence on the Google News page."
[http://news.google.com/intl/en_us/about_google_news.html]

Furthermore, the news site presents more recent items first, going back no further than the last 30 days.

In short, Prof. O'Connor's search results do not suggest that readers are most interested in sensational stories involving teachers, but they do suggest that the "editorial judgment of online news organizations" skews towards that kind of material, at least during the last month.

In short, Prof. O'Connor's search results do not suggest that readers are most interested in sensational stories involving teachers, but they do suggest that the "editorial judgment of online news organizations" skews towards that kind of material, at least during the last month.

thank you for an apt summation, mr. williams. i'd like to note, however, that "the editorial judgment of online news organizations" tends to reflect the inclinations & predilections of its target audience(s)--insofar as one accepts that the main goals of online news organizations & their editors are to 1) generate interest & 2) retain a loyal readership, which isn't a terribly far-fetched proposition, i'd say.

& so even though one needs to jump through the intermediary logical step listed above in order to reach it, the contention that "teachers and sex, or just the allegation, will fascinate many people" is, in my estimation, fundamentally sound & kinda intuitive & common sensical to boot.

Basic logic dictates that one's premise ("editorial judgment reflects readers' tastes") and one's conclusion ("editorial judgment reflects readers' tastes") cannot be the same thing.

maybe i can't express myself adequately, so let me try this one more time:

A: two of the main goals of online news organizations & their editors are to: #1, generate interest & #2, retain a loyal readership.

B1: a good way to accomplish #1 & #2 is to cater to the interests/tastes of the audience.

B2: if A & B1, then "editorial judgment" must, to some degree, cater to the interests/tastes of the audience.

C: if B2, then "editorial judgment" w/ regard to stories concerning teachers necessarily reflects, to some degree, the interest/taste of the audience w/ regard to storiers concerning teachers.

which part of the above chain of reasoning violates "basic logic"?

(this is all getting horribly academic, heh...)

"Basic logic dictates that one's premise ("editorial judgment reflects readers' tastes") and one's conclusion ("editorial judgment reflects readers' tastes") cannot be the same thing."

Google's fine print about how it chooses stories and sources says that it's all computer-driven. There are obviously a few human inputs, but they claim it's mostly automatic.

Which explains to me why there are occasionally stories from Xinhua and Pravda.

Personally, I'm a bit skeptical about the degree of human input.

If you want an idea how really common these teacher/sex/crime stories are, just scan educationnews.org for a week. Very depressing.