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Ex-sex-worker teach gives ‘biz’ lesson

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Pretty woman!

Former prostitute and suspended city public-school teacher Melissa Petro rocks the tasteful but leggy look in this magazine makeover, which evokes none of the Mexican strip joints and sex-for-hire shenanigans that landed her in hot water.

Instead, the former PS 70 stunner — who the city is seeking to fire after The Post revealed that she had been openly blogging about her past experience as a sex worker — is shown in January’s issue of Marie Claire confidently reclining on an elegant Victorian couch surrounded by stacks of literature.

The demure photos draw a stark departure from her tales of turning tricks.

In the piece, Petro, 30, details for the first time the nature of the sex-for-cash work that preceded her three years of teaching in The Bronx — like her four-month stint as a Craigslist call girl.

“I sold what ultimately amounted to GFE, ‘the girlfriend experience,’ which basically means the customer can expect the girl to be willing to act as if she were a ‘real’ date or girlfriend. Kissing, touching, oral sex, sex-sex,” Petro explains.

“I charged the going rate: $250 to $300 for an hour, sometimes more, never less . . . typically if [men] were offering more, it was because they wanted something strange or stupid: sex with no condom, role playing, something like that. No thanks,” she said.

She adds that most “calls” lasted under an hour, and that it was generally “not unpleasant work.”

Petro’s first foray into the seedy side of life started when, as a student in Mexico, she lost her only source of income and her credit card was denied at a grocery store.

“That’s around the time I met this guy, a tattoo artist, who introduced me to La Trampa — the strip club where I got my start,” she dishes.

She said that “stripping began as a solution for my problems at the time. It definitely seemed that way at first.”

But if the aspiring memoir-writer has any regrets about the predicament she’s in with her employer after writing about her trysts, they’re too few to mention.

“Ultimately, I believe I did nothing wrong,” the art and creative writing instructor told the magazine. which hit newsstands Tuesday.

“I think this whole scenario would be a little more palatable to the Department of Education, and my critics in general, if only I were a little more repentant. If I had stayed silent and in shame,” she adds.

“I have no regrets, not about going public, not about my past,” she said.

Petro, who has been assigned to administrative duty since Mayor Bloomberg personally ordered her out of the classroom in September, also says the city’s revamped version of the now-defunct “rubber rooms” is just as wasteful.

“Publicly, the Department of Education claims that people who’ve been reassigned are doing administrative work, but the reality is that no such work exists,” says the tattooed brunette.

“I’m paid my full salary to sit in what amounts to detention . . . I can spend the day surfing the Internet, sitting with my feet up, reading a book, or even working on my memoir,” she said.

yoav.gonen@nypost.com