by Sarah Ganly

Created on: February 07, 2010

When I was first starting my education to become a teacher, I realized that teaching is not always fun and games. There are some very serious implications that come along with being a teacher, and many, unfortunately, are legal issues. Here are some examples of court cases and legal actions that have happened in schools recently.

In the case of State v. Amero, that happened around January 2007. Julie Amero was convicted of "four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child" (Balko, 2007, para. 1). Amero was using the computer to demonstrate in front of the class when a virus caused a loop of pornographic pop-ups to start opening up on the screen.

The teacher claims she had no intention of this happening, and tried to close them while they continued to open up (Balko, 2007, para. 1). The school never had the computer tested for malware and did not have active filtering software on the computers. Julie Amero is facing 40 years in prison ( Balko, 2007, para. 1).

I feel that this ruling is wrong on many levels. I think that the school should be held responsible for the lack of active filters on the computers not the unsuspecting teacher. I also feel that 40 years in prison is not fair when murderers do not always receive that many years.

I think that the teacher should not be liable because she tried to handle the situation appropriately. I think she was not aware of the possible dangers that could occur while using this computer by no fault of her own. It is not Amero's fault that the school did not check these computers for viruses and did not renew the filters that are meant to limit what the children can view.

I also believe that it is unfair to assume that she should have been prepared for this event because this event would not have occurred if the school was taking care of their computers appropriately. Overall I feel she was not acting in a way that was negative towards the students and there is no way she could have anticipated these events taking place.

Rolland v. Judd is another case that features the educator as the defendant. This case happened in the year 2000, when Alicia Judd was accused of violating Kayla Rolland's "due process right to life" when a child left unattended shot another student (Dowling-Sendor, 2006, p. 52).

The judge ruling this case stated that there are the "three elements of agency liability under the state-created danger doctrine" were not all established and the judge ruled in favor of Judd (Dowling-Sendor,

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