Both of you are very kind: thank you, Alan, for the phrasing of your question, and you Tony, for the generous answer! And you're right: there is no real answer, no solution to this warfare "between firm teacher and kind friend," because as a teacher your loyalty is divided between the subject you ostensibly love enough to want to spend yuor life teaching it, and the live, vulnerable human beings you want to spur to greater effort but not humiliate or hurt.
And yes, it is the subject yu love, not the students. It's impossible to "love" people by the roomful, tht can only be done one by one. What I feel for students is good will, pleasure in their company--usually--and a sense of profound proessional obligation to do for them as much good as I can, because I'm being paid to do that and it's also my pleasure.
I guess what I did in the classroom, and what I do with workshop members now, is remember what my father taught me: that almost everything can be said in ways that will make it less hurtful without falsifying it. I think there are people who confuse brutality with honesty, but that's a mistake.
That "persona," by the way, was me, as I'm sure you've both guessed. The experience left its trace, and has given me a lot to think about over the years, but still no wholly satisfying "answer."
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