She’s a working girl once again!
Melissa Petro has landed a new teaching gig after being forced out of the city public schools nearly two years ago for going public about her past as a Craigslist prostitute and stripper.
The former Bronx elementary-school art teacher, who wrote blogs advocating for sex workers when she was not teaching young kids, says she’s “very happy” in her new career teaching adults memoir writing at Gotham Writing Workshops.
She has no plan to return to teaching youngsters.
“I’ve let that piece go,” she told The Post.
“I still have my teaching certificate, so I could still teach, but I’m very happy teaching adults.
“It’s very fulfilling for me, but for the financial implications.
“Gotham is one of the first institutions that has been willing to hire me, and I’m very thankful for that.”
She also has a second gig — teaching hookers how to share their stories at the Red Umbrella Project, an organization that teaches writing skills to sex workers.
“I took your class to meet you,” student Barbara Todish gushed to Petro after a six-hour intensive Gotham Writing workshop earlier this month.
The elderly woman with frizzy blond hair, who described herself as an ex-prostitute, paid $150 to take Petro’s class, in which she shared a memoir she’d written about her first kiss.
“I’m a former sex worker. It’s almost like I’m unemployable, too, now,’’ Todish said.
“I wanted to be a professor, but they always find out.”
Petro, wearing a sleeveless dress that showed off her tattooed arm, gave a PG-rated lecture to a class of 10.
She explained that talking about her past would be a “distraction’’ to her students.
Two Department of Education employees who enrolled unaware of her background had mixed reviews of their bad-girl teacher when they learned about her past.
“As a teacher, yes, it concerns me,” said a GED teacher on Staten Island who asked not to be identified.
“She’s probably better suited to teach adults. You literally have to kill someone to get fired from the DOE.”
A parent coordinator for a Brooklyn public school said, “In a way, I feel like defending her. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Petro is shopping her own memoir, about her quest to find an identity after the life she created as a sex worker at 19.
Petro, who has an MFA from The New School, said she regrets advocating for sex-worker rights while she was working for the Education Department.
She added that she has learned an important lesson about the risks of oversharing.
“I published with this naive belief that everyone has a right and is entitled to tell their story,” she said sadly.
“Writing doesn’t protect you the way I thought it would.”