Missouri substitute teacher Sheena Sittner says getting pulled from the classroom over her OnlyFans page did the opposite of ruin her. According to IBTimes UK‘s Christian Nogot Puno, the 42-year-old near St. Louis says she made nearly $25,000 in about a week and a half after the news broke, with subscribers jumping from roughly 20 to around 1,000 or more.

From $140 a day to a windfall

Sittner earned about $140 a day as a substitute in the Parkway School District. According to Thought Catalog‘s January Nelson, she says she often makes that same amount in an hour on OnlyFans. IBTimes UK notes the $25,000 haul equals roughly 179 days of her classroom pay.

Subscribers pay $27.99 a month. Her husband, Tim, has cut back on his own business to help handle the surge in demand. On St. Louis radio, she said none of her material involved pupils or school grounds, and that her page had gone unnoticed at work for more than two years.

How she got suspended

Her teaching assignments stopped in September when Kelly Education, the staffing contractor that placed her in Parkway classrooms, suspended her employment account pending termination. Nelson reports that a manager cited her OnlyFans screen name and her activity on the site. Local TV covered the story on Sept. 25; about five days later, Sittner swapped her anonymous handle for her real name.

Her 9-year-old son was among her elementary students. She’d spent decades working with children and said they often greeted her with hugs. “I love those kids,” she told reporters.

The money matters at home. She’s taking criminal justice classes toward a degree, and her 18- and 22-year-old children are in college.

“People say, ‘Oh, you don’t teach for the pay,'” she said, per Thought Catalog. “That’s true, but bills don’t stop coming just because you’re passionate about the job you have. Banks don’t care.”

What Kelly and the district say

Kelly Education says pupil safety is its top priority and that it works with districts to respond quickly to concerns about substitute teachers. An agency email asked her not to contact any campus or district office. In a statement to FOX 2, the firm said that request covered only her teaching role: “It does not, and cannot, limit anyone’s right as a parent.”

A Parkway spokesman said the district would treat Sittner like any other parent, noting she had cleared a background check and online safety training.

Corey Silverstein, a Detroit-area First Amendment lawyer, told The Washington Post that dismissals over such accounts are rising, and that more employers now write side-work clauses into contracts. Accounts like hers will come to light sooner or later, “no matter how private you think they are,” he said, as quoted by IBTimes UK.

Missouri has seen this before. In 2023, Brianna Coppage, then an English teacher at St. Clair High School, resigned after officials suspended her over her OnlyFans page.

She’s not sweating who flagged her

Sittner never found out who reported her account. She says she’s past caring.

“I truly believe in freedom of speech,” she said. “The backlash women receive for doing online content, it’s absolutely awful.”

And on the outing itself: “Whoever did it was probably hoping they would ruin my life,” she said. “In fact, they have helped it out so much that I don’t even care they ratted me out.”

The takeaway

Sittner’s story is the creator-economy version of unintended consequences: a school contractor suspended her over OnlyFans, the press piled on, and her subscriber count exploded. Whether districts tighten side-hustle rules or more teachers quietly do the math on $140 a day versus an hour on subscription sites, the incentive structure isn’t going away.

Image: St. Louis skyline from the Gateway Arch, June 2023, photo by PCN02WPS (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.