Teachers across Russia have launched a social media campaign in the defense of their colleague who was fired for posing in a photograph wearing a swimsuit.
Middle school history teacher Viktoria Popova, 26, in the Siberian city of Omsk was let go last week for a pinup photo series posted by a plus-size modeling school.
A community of teachers on social media has since launched a #TeachersAreHumansToo campaign in support of Popova, asking educators across Russia to submit photographs of themselves in swimsuits.
“Teachers are unjustly picked on for their personal, private life to which they are entitled like everyone else,” the ‘Education Ombudsman’ community wrote on Russia’s Vkontakte social network over the weekend.
The community page collected scores of mostly beach-themed submissions from both male and female users in three days. One user submitted a photograph of President Vladimir Putin on a fishing trip with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
As the campaign gathered steam, the Omsk regional administration hosted a meeting between Popova and the school's administration, which reportedly offered her to continue teaching “either in the same or a different school.”
