Authenticity

I really, strongly dislike fake people. I believe that sometimes and in certain situations it is hard to be who you truly are. But that doesn't mean that you should change and be someone that you are not. I know that for myself personally, there are only a few people that I can completely be myself around... with no reservations. However this doesn't mean that around the rest of the population that I put a mask on and am someone completely different, that would be authentic. Rather I just hold back some of my deeper beliefs, opinions, thoughts and feelings. These are not things that I think just anyone can be trusted with or privy too. I try very hard to not change my beliefs or personality to mirror those of the people I am around and I think that if you try to be someone who you aren't people are going to see right through it. I don’t know how you exactly know when a person is being fake, but you just do, they just don’t seem sincere I think that the same mentality should be applied in the teaching profession.
It always got on my nerves when teachers in high school sucked up and tried to be buddy buddy with the "cool kids" in class or tried to act like they were are age. Who are you kidding?? You are an adult so don’t act like you are still in high school. At the same time it might possibly have bugged me even more when teachers didn’t let you know anything about them. The teachers that came to class taught the material and didn’t tell you anything about themselves. These were the teachers that I had alot harder time connecting with and because of this I generally didn’t find the subjects as interesting. Because I did not know the teacher at all I generally didn’t try as hard in their classes, which may sound bad but I think that when I knew a teacher well I worked allot harder because I simply didn’t want to let them down. Kind of hard to let someone down if you didn’t know them at all. So I think that in the cause of authenticity, like in many other things like sweets or junk food it is best to have a happy medium. As a teacher you don’t want to be too fake and turn into someone you aren’t but on the other hand you don’t want to be a robot teacher and not allow your students the opportunity to get to know you at all.