Teacher Leaves After Past Resurfaces

ST. LOUIS (CN) - A high school science teacher has been placed on administrative leave and will not return to her job after disclosing that she had previously worked as a porn actress.

Tera Myers, 38, requested leave Friday after a student approached her about her past, Parkway School District officials told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Myers was in her fourth year of teaching at Parkway North High School and also coached girls volleyball. She will be paid through the end of the school year.

"Out of respect for her privacy and that of her family, the district has agreed to accept the teacher's request to be placed on administrative leave for the remainder of the school year," officials said in a statement.

It is not the first time Myers' past has caught up with her. In 2006, she was suspended from Reidland High School in Paducah, Ky., for similar reasons after a student found a copy of an X-rated film she appeared in and showed it to other students.

Myers told her story later that year on the "Dr. Phil" television show; she said she appeared in her first porn film when she was 22. At the time, she was a homeless mother of two, according to the show's website.

"Doing pornographic material has ruined my teaching career and my life," she said, according to the website. "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 was hired by Parkway after passing standard background checks. A district spokesman told the Post-Dispatch that what she did was not illegal, so it was not revealed in the background checks.

Parkway North is in Creve Coeur, an affluent suburb 15 miles west of St. Louis.

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