this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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We referring to teachers as "it" now?
Damn. Underpaid and dehumanized all at once. That's gotta be rough.
As a non-native speaker, referring to a single teacher as "they" is not very intuitive (although correct)...
Yes it is. It's completely intuitive. Native English speakers do it all the time every day. The singular "they" is used literally without conscious thought. The only time it becomes controversial is with transphobes talking about specific people who do not identify with their gender assigned at birth. Even transphobes use singular "they" without thinking in contexts like this OP where the gender is unknown. (Which is why their "but it's bad grammar!" arguments fall flat.)
Just because people with years of experience with something don't have to think about it, doesn't mean it's intuitive.
As a non-native speaker, I don't find it intuitive at all, even though I don't have to think about it anymore. And as you can see by their post, OP didn't find it intuitive either.