Local Teacher of the Year Keenon Hall Resigns After Admitting Sex With Student

(May 29) -- An award-winning Georgia teacher resigned after allegedly embarking on a sexual relationship with a 17-year old student after he asked her for help with his homework.

Keenon Hall, 29, had a six-month relationship with a football-playing senior at the Gwinnet County school, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The two had sexual encounters in the teacher's classroom, a hotel and a friend's classroom.

Hall even paid for a cab to ferry the boy to a hotel room, where she plied him with vodka and asked him if he liked drinking.

"I told her lies about being a good drinker, but honestly after one drink I was done," the boy wrote in an investigative file compiled by the school's human resources department. "She began feeling my man parts and we had sex."

The relationship did not end well. The student alleges that Hall began to pressure him into having a baby with her, according to The Atlanta Constitution Journal. When he refused, she gave him a failing grade and he reported the relationship to school officials.

Hall was voted Shiloh High Teacher of the Year last fall, with her name appearing in school bulletins. She was also honored at a Gwinnet County awards dinner with other teachers from the area.

She has since reportedly admitted to the school that she had a sexual relationship with the student and resigned.

Hall "clearly has terrible judgment and is a very, very sick person," psychotherapist Jenn Burman told CNN.

Still, not everyone views Hall as a villain. Her family has jumped to her defense, insisting that she is a victim of a demanding profession and unscrupulous school culture, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Hall worked hard in her job, working her way up from a substitute teacher to win a full-time position at the school. The pressure of dealing with difficult teenagers, pushy parents and unsupportive school administrators then began to tell on her, according to her parents. Eventually she began to lose sleep and shed hair through stress, they say.

"How can seven years of teaching and a reputation be destroyed because of the word of one knucklehead? I think that's wrong," her father Dennis Hall told The Atlanta Constitution-Journal.

Hall cited medical reasons in her resignation letter.

The student, now 18, says Hall showered him with gifts including cash and a cell phone. These gifts, along with his declining grades, tipped off his family that there was something going on at school.

The student is has accepted a full scholarship playing football at a North Carolina University, according to The Atlanta Constitution-Journal.