A second teacher at a high school in Missouri was put on leave after administrators discovered her OnlyFans side hustle.
Megan Gaither, 31, said during an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that she was placed on leave from her English teaching and varsity cheerleading coach position on Oct. 27 after district officials found out about her account on the OnlyFans platform.
I think the idea is that a lot of teachers feel they cannot maintain a proper teacher-student relationship unless the student see them as some sort of ultimate authority on something, and seeing them as humans might put cracks in that. I don’t agree with them since most of the teachers I loved the most in school were the ones I could empathize with, but it was certainly the way a lot of my teachers seemed to believe when I was in school.
I agree. I got the impression it was something they all were taught while getting their education degrees. It reeks of policy developed on ancient and flawed pseudo-psychology
That being said, I know dealing with kids is hard. I can well remember how I thought every parent was stupid and that parenting was easy before I had kids.
I can’t say I have a better way, just that I’m suspicious ofthe current mentality.
The mindset gets embedded into teachers pretty early in their careers. I met my partner in college and was with her while she was a middle school teacher for years so I got the to see this develop in realtime. Education students need to have absolutely flawless records in order to even be eligible for hire. If they have so much as a drunk and disorderly charge on their record then they are essentially barred from teaching because the background checks are so stringent.
It largely depends on the age of students that’s in question, but you also have to remember that teachers are always at the mercy of the parents. They need to deal with a diverse range of religious, political, and educational backgrounds and try to maintain neutrality. Administration will almost always bend to a parent complaint - it’s largely just the way our education system is structured in the US.
So my wife teaches at a college / trade school, and has worked there for about 5 years. Previously she was a field engineer with a lot of experience working with the trades. She prefers to be “one of the boys” but can also play the professional role.
So at first she figured “well we are all adults here” and treated everyone as peers who were there to learn. It didn’t take long for her to be frustrated and burned out. She told me it’s too hard emotionally to think of the students as people, much like how livestock cannot be pets (we have a farm, lol).
There’s an endless stream of them and some are good, some are bad, some don’t try and some give it their best but don’t have what it takes. Some ask her if she’s on Tinder or have an Onlyfans… Ick. You can’t get them all through the course and you can’t develop relationships with them or their stress and emotions will rub off on you.
So she started putting up this firm barrier where she is the teacher and they are the students. Changed her style of dress from business casual to “unapproachable career woman”, puts on that teacher attitude, and is enjoying her life a lot more.
However it results in that odd behaviour mentioned above. If we go out to a casual pub to eat pub food and drink beer, when one of her students walks in the door she’s practically hiding under the table. “They can’t see me like this! I don’t have my makeup on, I’m wearing jeans, I’m drinking beer from a can! They have to think of me as a teacher, not an ordinary person!”
That’s called healthy work boundaries my dude
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