The teaching community (as an institution)has some pretty specific thoughts on how to maintain the parent/student relationship and it involves maintaining some kind of curated image to their students.
One time, when I was maybe 25, I saw a gaggle of good looking women at a pub about the same age as me, and then they came over and asked how I had liked the conference. “conference?”
There had been a teacher conference and a large group went for drinks later and assumed I was also a teacher. I lied and joined the group.
We ended up going to a nightclub later, and one teacher saw that a few of their students had managed to get into the club, and they LOST IT. Not upset at the kids, but they were captured by abstract horror at the thought of their student seeing THEM at the club.
I pushed on it a little bit, like “shouldn’t they be the ones worried about seeing you?”
And like, the whole group thought I had lost my mind. If COURSE the students couldn’t see us there, how would they ever respect us if they understood us as humans with our own lives? The teacher/student relationship would evaporate. Anarchy. The response to my question was immediate and unanimous.
So… I gotta say… I don’t really get it… But there is a culture and mindset within the teaching community that is extremely foreign to me. And, based on my personal experience, I suspect that suspending OF teachers is probably the popular response within the greater teaching community as a whole. I’d be REALLY curious if there is any data that disproves my hypothesis.