Professional Appearance, part 2

Hello everyone,

I received the following email in response to yesterday's note on professional dress:

"I agree [with what you wrote about professional appearance), but it's difficult to dress as a professional when it is 100 degrees in your classroom and you've got 42 teenagers inside a closed room. You tend to favor clothes that are cool and will not show sweat stains."

This brings up several points that are worth considering.

Practicality is an important one. Favoring clothes that are cool when it's hot in your room is an understandable adaptation. Favoring clothes that will not show sweat stains can be critical. Implied in the email is the idea that, given 42 teenaged bodies at 100 degrees, things can get (in the words of Mark Twain) "various." The teacher, of course, will want to avoid adding to the variety of odors.

If you accept the idea that one of the reasons for professional dress is to communicate the aura of being a teacher to the students, then making an adaptation (such as favoring cooler clothes) for practical reasons is only a relative modification in dress. Even at the beach, one can usually tell the difference between a regular beach-goer and a lifeguard. (I'm not advocating dressing for the beach in your classroom.) Dressing for coolness (meaning temperature, not style) does not preclude modesty or the appearance of being an authority figure. Problems adapting to the temperature would only begin when your cool clothing became distractingly revealing, or you seemed so casual as to encourage your students to give up learning for the day. (Remember that, even when temperatures soar, we should not give up teaching, though we may have to modify our normal style.)

Your point about the lack of sweat stains is an important one. Our students are often less patient with poor grooming and hygiene than we are. Anti-perspirant and deodorant are an essential part of dressing professionally. (While we're on the subject, I have to point out that, if you drink coffee, you need to take care of your breath frequently; and most teachers' breath normally gets stale by afternoon. If you can't be sure of the sweetness of your breath, you ought to avoid close face-to-face contact with your students.) Also, avoid colors that show sweat.

I don't mean by any of this to suggest that we should endure the unendurable in our classrooms, and simply modify the way we dress when it gets too hot. Communicating air conditioning problems with the plant manager (ext. 2020) is important. Some of you may be in rooms with individual air conditioning systems, and the only way the plant manager would know they have gone bad is if you tell him. (Don't get mad at him; tell him; follow up politely if necessary.)

Be practical, but in a professional way. They're not necessarily exclusive of each other.

Jeff Combe