TAMPA, Fla. – Here’s a new twist on the sickening, all-too-common problem of teachers seducing their students.

On Tuesday, a former elementary teacher told jurors she exchanged hundreds of sexually explicit text messages with a 12-year-old male student as a way of keeping him interested in schoolwork and providing him with positive feedback.

“My concern for him was that he was going through puberty and only focused on things that 12-year-old boys think about, being of a sexual nature, and at the time with him struggling in school, and having behavioral issues, and anger issues, and acting out at home, and not being able to connect with his family, that was my purpose. To gain his attention. And, yes, I did it in an inappropriate way, but that was my goal,” Ethel Anderson, 31, testified before a Hillsborough Circuit Court jury, according to ABCActionNews.com.

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

Anderson denies ever having a sexual relationship with the student, whom she has known since he was a first-grader. Anderson was tutoring the boy – who was reportedly not her student at Mango Elementary School – at her home.

Prosecutors, however, presented jurors with a secretly recorded conversation the boy’s mother had with Anderson, in which the former educator confessed to multiple sex acts with the child, including oral sex.

“In the recording, played in court, a sobbing Anderson apologizes repeatedly after the mother appeals to the teacher’s professed Christian ideals,” reports TampaBay.com.

The boy’s mother learned of the alleged molestation after coming across some text messages between her son and the teacher, reports ABCActionNews.com.

Anderson is being charged with lewd and lascivious behavior. Closing arguments began Wednesday morning.

For an in-depth analysis of the growing “teachers-turned-molesters” problem, check out EAGnews’ exposé, “Sextracurricular Activities.”