As a teacher, you are faced with the difficult task of keeping up a professional and squeaky-clean image to your students. Because of this, many teachers have private social media account where they use a different surname in order to stop their students from finding them.
However, teachers are humans and they're not perfect. Whether it's getting caught having one too many drinks on a Friday night at a local pub, or pupils somehow discovering an embarrassing hobby that their teacher has, there is a multitude of ways that this "professional" face can slip.
But, while it's usually easy to brush off the incidents, one Russian teacher has been fired after pictures emerged of her in swimwear.
Viktoria Popova, a history teacher at school number 7 in Omsk, has been fired after being told that photos of her in a swimsuit had brought her school and profession into disrepute.
The school made the decision after parents had reacted angrily to images of her in the pin-up style outfit. Omsk city hall said that she had caused "irreversible damage to the reputation of the teacher.
"By spreading frivolous images on the internet in order to promote a commercial project she also hurt the image of the school."
Viktoria, on her part, hit back at the critics, saying:
"I do not understand why I am getting the blame. I wasn't posing in underwear or stockings.
"I said to them: "Don't you know about American 1950s pin-up style?
"I’m sorry but this was not promoting some men’s saloon.
"People do take pictures nowadays. They pose on holidays and post pictures online. This was just an advert for a shop."
Viktoria was speaking to news agency NGS Omsk which has now offered her a job. "We promise her salary will be higher than she was paid as a teacher," said the agency.
"Our company - unlike school number 7 - stands for bright and daring people, and respects their hobbies."
Viktoria claims that she did not intend for her pictures to be used on the model agency's website, which is where they were picked up by parents. "When I signed the contract with the model agency, I didn't realise the fact that pictures can be used and uploaded online," she said.
"I went to them not to become a model, but to lift my self-esteem. And I didn't plan to share the pictures online.
"I just wanted them to be stored in my album."
Viktoria says that she never intended for her images to end up in the hands of parents at the school and her dismissal has caused outrage among other teachers. Since she was dismissed, over 3,000 people have shared photos of themselves in swimsuits in order to protest the decision using the hashtag "#TeachersArePeopleToo"
To be honest, it's hardly Viktoria's fault that the images of her landed in the hands of parents and it's not as if they are offensive in any way. You can't expect teachers to wear their professional face throughout their entire lives. As the hashtag says, they are people too.
