Playing strip poker with kids is not a good idea

I normally stick to Washington news items, but Idaho has it's fair share of knuckleheads too. From the Spokesman Review (subscription only):

Teacher accused of playing strip poker

May 10, 2006

A teacher at Coeur d'Alene's Lake City Junior Academy has been accused of playing strip poker with several boys during a recent camping trip.

The teacher, 42-year-old Andy Armstrong of Coeur d'Alene, has been suspended with a dismissal pending, said Twila Brown, principal at the private Christian school.

"When we learned of the incident, we took appropriate action," Brown said Tuesday.

The school board was briefed on the incident and the steps the school took at a meeting Monday night, Brown added.


When reached at his home Tuesday, Armstrong declined to comment, saying he probably should speak with a lawyer first.

Brown called the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department on Saturday to report the incident. According to the sheriff's telephone call log, the strip poker card game is believed to have occurred between April 24 and 28 during a school trip to Camp MiVoden on Hayden Lake.

The principal told a sheriff's deputy that Armstrong played the card game, in which losers must remove articles of clothing, with several boys. Armstrong also told the boys not to tell anyone, according to the sheriff's report.

The Upper Columbia Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church operates the camp and the Lake City Junior Academy.

Armstrong remained listed on the school's Web site Tuesday as teaching physical education and science to fifth through 10th grades. He is listed as having 11 years of experience.

The standby joke is to wonder how the hell he thought this would be a good idea, but one supposes that he probably knew all along it wasn't a good idea and did it anyway. As a male teacher this disgusts me, because guys like him make all of us guys look bad.