I'm a little antisocial so I'm curious about other people's opinions on this since it's possible I'm biased or just overly anxious! Quick edit just to be clear, I'm early 20s, not a teenager!
For background I had this teacher (~30?) once a week in Fall quarter, we never talked outside of class or had any kind of rapport really and I wasn't the most fluent in the class at all so I kinda avoided making small talk. The class ended but in the first couple days of winter break he randomly messaged me on Facebook, it was to my school affiliated account but wasn't related to school. NGL because it was super random I just ignored them, it's been almost 2 months since then.
Since the class ended I don't see this teacher anymore, but he covered one of my teachers last week. I went to the bathroom after class, when I came back it was just the two of us, he asked if I saw his message and I said yeah and I forgot to reply. He started telling me about a trip he went on so I thought he was just making small talk, he then asked if I use WhatsApp and I said no mostly Line. He said he took pictures on the trip and took his phone out so I thought he was about to show me but he literally had his Line QR code pulled up already LMAO so I started to backtrack and said I use Messenger too but he was kind of insistent so I added him. He messaged me that afternoon and again over the weekend talking about his hobbies and asking about mine.
There's really nothing creepy about the messages themselves but the situation is just weird to me? I'm American and I feel like even in a college setting with adults this would be weird unless you already have some kind of rapport, and after studying in Japan for almost 8 months this is the first time a teacher has asked for my personal contact info even though I have teachers I talk to a lot. I also kind of just don't want to talk to him lol but I'm worried about having him as a teacher in the future if I hurt his feelings or something. At this point I'm just wondering if I'm overthinking and if anyone can speak to the normalcy of this and if I should feel the need to reply or not?
This got longer than I thought so thank you for reading🥹
Edit: thank you everyone for your input! Seems like it's obviously off to everyone else lol, the one friend I brought this up to totally brushed it off so I needed a sanity check😭 Thankfully I've had no interactions with him since this, for now I'm going to talk to one of my classmates about it and maybe my head teacher in case it escalates. Thank you!
by zipper701