JobWatch: Teacher won't get second chance to escape porn-star past

Much has been said and written over the past three years about an economy that has cruelly stripped away millions of jobs.

But we rarely encounter someone heading for the unemployment office because a salacious past came back to bite her on the derriere that was rather overexposed 15 years ago.

As you may be aware, this is the circumstance that has tripped up the career of Parkway North High School science instructor and one-time X-rated movie actress Tera Myers.

Parkway officials placed Myers on administrative leave — at her request — last week after a student passed the word among classmates about what he had observed in a decidedly noneducational video found online.

She has informed the district she won't return when classes resume in August. Myers, 38, isn't talking.

But she had plenty to say five years ago, when the same issue led to the loss of her first teaching position. According to a story by my colleague Elizabethe Holland, Myers (then known as Tericka Dye) responded to her dismissal by the Paducah, Ky., schools by appearing on the syndicated talk show hosted by pop psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw.

In an account posted on McGraw's website, Myers traced her X-rated career to a period when, as a 22-year-old single mother of two, she fell in with the wrong crowd.

"I was broke and wound up meeting some strippers who introduced me to stripping. I was making a lot of irrational decisions, porn only being the worst," Myers told McGraw.

It could be reasonably argued that sharing one's deeply personal problems on a national stage with an Oprah wannabe also falls squarely into the category of inexplicably poor decisions.

But I digress.

Myers told McGraw she initiated the effort to turn her life around by enlisting in the Army. Honorably discharged, she took advantage of the GI Bill to enroll at Murray State (Ky.), earning the degree that brought the teaching job at Paducah's Reidland High School.

Students and parents — believing the expertise Myers brought to the classroom trumped whatever talents she once publicly exhibited in the bedroom — came to the teacher's defense after Paducah officials terminated her contract.

Rejecting the argument that she deserved the benefit of the doubt, the district proceeded with the termination — a decision that drove Myers into the armchair of Dr. Phil.

Five years later in St. Louis, Myers has stayed mum as the media swirls around her. But others have spoken up on her behalf, including some you might not expect to defend ex-porn stars.

Among scores of online comments on the Post-Dispatch story, a woman who called herself a "Christian Soldier" wrote: "I think she should have her second chance. She has proven you can screw up royally early in life and turn it around into a positive. I'm wondering what some of the other teachers may have been involved with at college or before their teaching careers that, if known, might 'distract' students they teach! We've all done stuff we regret. It's how to overcome it that counts."

Following the lead of their counterparts in Paducah, Parkway North students added their voices to the chorus supporting Myers. Interviewed by local television news reporters, they praised Myers' abilities as a teacher.

They additionally volunteered that the instructor's predicament has imparted a valuable lesson about the long-term consequences of one's actions.

In education circles, this is known as a teachable moment, the lesson being to think before you act.

Myers may live in a culture that h