A Teacher, A Burden

I recently finished watching all of A Teacher, the series. Since I was a kid, I have always found teacher and student sexual relationships interesting as a type of crime, such as the case of Mary Kay Letourneau. In the mini series A Teacher, it focuses on a high school teacher, Claire, who grooms her 17 year old student Eric. The show did a great job at luring me in, just like Claire did to Eric. It started out making Claire's actions to seem normal. It even made it look like Eric was truly happy in the beginning and middle stages of their relationship, as if it was what he truly wanted. Though the director did an impeccable job at showing each subtle way Claire was grooming and manipulating Eric, I got caught up in all of the fun they were having with their illicit and secret times together. Sometimes the actors made me feel like what they were doing was ok. Even Claire thought it was ok at some point and told her coworker she was having sex with Eric. This was the moment everything in the show took a 180 and became a train wreck for all characters involved! I knew it was coming from all the stress building up before the word was out for the two characters. Her confession was a bomb explosion with a lifelong fallout problem for everyone. With almost every episode after that, Claire became increasingly despicable and desperate. Eric became further lost and confused with his whole college identity being wrapped up in the student who screwed his teacher.

As I watched the months and years pass by in these characters lives, I truly understood the deep impact of Claire's choices. I felt sorry for her a few times because her father was her abuser during her upbringing, showing abuse leads to abuse.  When it came down to it, she stayed in the town she was living rather than moving elsewhere in the country, which might have helped her grow personally. Eric moved away, but when he came back to visit family after many years, he bumped into Claire at the grocery store which lead to them meeting for lunch soon after. Eric was still angry with her and realized how deeply he was affected and manipulated, leaving her at the lunch table with no notion of forgiveness. I can't blame his character for these emotions since his life was permanently altered in a negative way from a teacher he was suppose to be able to seek proper guidance and trust from, not including basic education from her.

​As someone who has been a victim of sexual assault, it is very difficult, if not impossible to put the actions of your manipulators/assaulters behind you and for this reason, I think the show ended in a meaningful way. Many people have said this show glamourizes and normalizes teacher and student sexual relationships. I disagree with that critique and if you give each episode your undivided attention, you can see just how difficult, sad, distraught, complicated, and disgusting the whole plot is.

On another note, the show has made me reflect on a past teacher of mine in high school, who was great at teaching and inspiring us all. She was a favorite of all the students because she was younger, fun, and easy going. She was married and had a daughter, I know because we all got to experience her first pregnancy and marriage stories. My senior year of high school, she became pregnant again and word got out that the baby was one of my classmate's older brothers because they had relations together after an on campus senior class party we had. We all realized that she was unfaithful to her husband and put everything else to the wayside, as this pregnant teacher told us in class that these rumors were true. I don't know how anyone gained knowledge of the facts in the first place, but I remember feeling so conflicted and confused about her actions. She was openly talking to us in class about her sexual relation mistake and pregnancy as if we were her friends, rather than keeping us out of her business. Now that I am older, I see how unprofessional this was and have come to realize, though the circumstance wasn't directly with one of my classmates but his older brother, the proximity of the situation was the problem, and so was the burden of her actions for talking to all of us like we were her friends. To this day, I have the burden of thinking about her discussing it with us, and I think about the lifelong burden Claire caused for everyone in her life through her actions in A Teacher.