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A 13-year-old boy who penned a "crush note" to his teacher ended up exchanging explicit sexual messages with her in a written journal - only to be found out by other students in the class.
The teacher has been formally censured by the Teachers Council disciplinary tribunal and struck off the register.
"The simple fact of the matter is that it involves a teacher engaging in an entirely inappropriate relationship with a Year 8 (13-year-old) student, discussing sexual matters in the most graphic terms," tribunal chairman Kenneth Johnston wrote of the case.
Neither the student, the teacher nor school were publicly identified.
The tribunal heard that the intermediate school teacher had an inappropriate written relationship lasting several weeks last year.
She had run a journal system in class, allowing students to communicate anything they wished to her during the 20-minute daily session. She would respond as time allowed.
The pupil apparently wrote a message about having sex with his girlfriend and disclosed he had a crush on the teacher.
She told the tribunal she dealt with it as best she could by saying it was "not okay" for him to have sex with his girlfriend and his crush on her was ridiculous given the age gap and their relative positions in life.
That first journal was destroyed by the student. Later, the messages started again in a new journal.
The journal - which ran to 77 pages - included exchanges in which the teacher discussed touching the student and being "turned on", talked about showing her g-string underwear and commenting on the size of the student's penis.
The notes were discovered by two other students while the rest of the class was at physical education.
When confronted by the principal, the teacher initially denied the handwriting in the book was hers but later conceded it was.
After reading a transcript, she admitted it did not look good and "could be seen as extremely unprofessional".
The teacher resigned from the school, undertook counselling, apologised and pointed to her relative professional inexperience.
The tribunal also heard the mother-of-two had a dysfunctional family environment and recently had a breakdown in her de facto relationship.
