Does the suit make the teacher?
January 28th, 2011 | Filed under: Opinion, teachingNot in The Netherlands it doesn’t. I’ve not had a great deal of exposure to Dutch work environments other than the few times I’ve visited the immigration office and the time I’ve spent with the curriculum team developing a new international school. Working from home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But even after a few visits to real workplaces, something is startling clear: Casual apparel is okay in The Netherlands, especially in the workplace.
In America, as most Americans can attest, your work attire is taken very seriously, particularly in offices. As a newspaper reporter I only dressed up when heading to a cushy office to interview someone and the rest of the time I rocked jeans and casual dresses. In a workplace where people (used to?) smoke and keep bottles of bourbon in their desks, this is an improvement. But when I became a teacher that all changed. I needed to “dress respectably to be respected,” as one principal told the staff during a meeting. Apparently dressing respectably meant skirt and pants suits like the administrators wore each day.
Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to begin training in the MYP curriculum. It was an all-day session that challenged me and my new colleagues to move away from our previous experiences as educators and think within this new curriculum focused on authentic, project-based learning and interdisciplinary collaboration. I’m still reflecting on the experience and writing about it, which I’ll share soon, but as invigorating as the experience was it was also a chance for me to chat casually with these teachers. Usually we’re cramming a lot into our meetings and have little time for chit-chat, but we had lunch together and tea breaks and I shared a lot about myself, the true outsider on the team, and learned more about them. Photo by semuthutan.
The most glaring difference I found while hanging out in the personeelskamer (teacher’s lounge) is that seeing people “dressed up” was a rarity. Now, these educators weren’t rolling into work in sweat pants, but here are just a few examples:
– Older gentleman in jeans, flannel shirt, suspenders, sneakers.
– Younger woman in cotton dress, tights, Ugg-type boots.
– Administrator in khakis, button-down shirt (no tie), and a houndstooth jacket.
– Younger man in khakis, loafers, and an untucked polo shirt.
It may seem that I’m being overly superficial, analyzing the wardrobe choices of the teachers I encountered, but it affected me so much that I knew there had to be a reason. I realized that this casualness toward dress code was indicative of something deeper in the culture of the school and the attitude toward the teachers. They are considered professionals and treated as such. It’s as if someone said “Yes, I know you’re a professional and I don’t need you to wear black pumps and suit pants to prove it.”
I met a young teacher who had the opportunity to do her student teaching internship in Pennsylvania as part of an exchange program. She said she was told she had to dress up and spent the first few weeks buying new clothes for the entire experience. She told me that in The Netherlands people dress down at work – wearing “work clothes” – and save their dressy attire for events and nights out. Makes sense to me. Teaching is hard work and I don’t know how many days I came home from my internship with my toes nearly arthritic from being crammed in fancy shoes for eight hours.
As a teacher in Virginia I’ve been frustrated with the discussions surrounding a potential ban on virtual communication between students and teachers. The state’s board of education is considering banning teachers from chatting with students on Facebook, Twitter, and through text messages. The reason? To protect the students. At first blush that sounds like a good idea. We all want to protect the students! But why would we want to protect them from their teachers? Yes, there have been the few cases of teachers and students sexting, but with nearly half a million teachers in the country that’s a small drop in the bucket. The education system paints with a wide brush and often does so to the detriment of innovation in our tired system. In this case, rather than deal with the inappropriate teacher-student relationships as they arise, the board is treating all teachers as potential predators than the professionals the majority of them are.
Yes, there are things online that I’d prefer students not run into – predators being the main one. But those dangers are everywhere, not just online. And to take away the one connection to responsible adults that kids may have in those spaces is truly irresponsible. Wouldn’t it be better for us to hold their hands crossing the road than to say “No, holding hands might lead to a sexual relationship, so we’ll just let the kid cross the six-lane highway. Alone.”
I’ve heard familiar gripes about teachers here – that it’s so easy and they get the summers off. Dream job! But overall the school culture itself seems to lead toward a mutual respect among colleagues and an understanding that no, whether one wears jeans or a suit doesn’t mean one is a better or worse teacher. Effectiveness isn’t tied to your tie. Leadership isn’t lost by leaving your collar unbottoned. Seems a little ridiculous when we think about it this way, don’t you think?
It’s small thing, but it means a lot. It has me wondering what other small differences might go a long way to change the entrenched culture of schools in America.
Tags: America, culture shock, dress codes, education system, Facebook, Holland, international school, MYP, Netherlands, online predators, online safety, professionalism, school culture, sexting, social media, student safety, Twitter, Virginia 10 Comments »
Your reflection on the differences in cultures is so interesting, Mary. It isn’t talked about enough; it would be valuable to make those invisible things we are enculturated to visible. Questioning the why of it brings greater clarity on other aspects, just as you highlight the texting ban. Thanks for this!
Thanks for reading and commenting, Andrea! I walk around The Netherlands feeling grossly underdressed most of the time, but it was nice to realize women and men dress down a bit when they’re on the job – even if that job is in a school where we’re told to dress up as instructors.
I do not think that the suit makes the teacher. As a teacher we should be respected and approachable. I am thinking of how my elementary students would feel if they were perhaps intimidated by a teachers “professional” attire. I feel that it should be up to the individual in what they feel most comfortable in to wear to work. If people are in their comfort zone then they are more likely to be better at what they are doing. I do not think that something as casual as sweat pants is acceptable.
I think they have it right over in the Netherlands. It seems like everything you do in the US, is because thats what society says you should do. Putting on a suit or a Business dress, doesn’t turn you into superman or superwomen. What it does is say i’m better than you. This is how i would think students would view it. Thats the wrong message you would want to send. How about dressing down. I would would think that would send the message of, hey guys and girls, i’m no better than you, in fact, i’m just like everybody else in the room.
I think that would make you a little more approachable from the students’ point of view.
Now about that facebook thing. I… don’t know. There are some cases where some teachers have abused it. This could go either way. What i do think is that someone needs to come up with a way to police the system better, instead of rejecting it. School systems need to invest in ways of figuring out a solution, rather than being closed minded. Maybe they can set up something where facebook is piped through the school systems’ website, with a series of filters that would have to be navigated, before the connection is actually made. It needs to be looked at anyway. Based on how fast technology is moving, someone has already figure it out, they’re just trying to get the highest fee before they release it.
Neely – I agree with you on all fronts here. We need to be approachable and treated as professionals. I think we know better than to wear sweat pants to work, though it’s important to mention common sense in the dress code. I’ve seen teachers in “professional attire” that one might question as such (tight, way-too-short skirts, for example). Rather than create a strict dress code for all I think we should deal with those as they arise. There’s nothing wrong with a colleague saying “ya know, you might not want to wear that again.” Sure, it’s embarrassing, but it doesn’t ruin the whole thing for the rest of us.
Woodie – I think we agree on the dress code thing. Respect in the classroom comes from many things and I don’t think any of those factors involve whether I choose to wear heels or flat shoes to work. As for the Facebook thing, I’m not sure filters are the answer. Yes, there are cases where teachers have abused it, but to me those very rare cases aren’t enough to warrant a flat-out ban. To me that says that teachers can’t be trusted. For example, that’s like saying just because one male teacher had an inappropriate relationship with a student we should ban all collaboration between male and female students. I think this comes from the way we treat technology – as an added thing, a privilege, like a field trip – rather than a tool that should become ubiquitous as pens and paper. I think schools, if they are going to filter, need just a very basic one to prevent pornography. There’s so much learning possibility on social networks and sites like YouTube that hardcore filters end up blocking. The most important thing is to educate kids. Scare tactics don’t work. Kids need to understand all the great things about the internet and embrace it and not be afraid of it, but also learn the skills of skepticism and wariness – not taking things at full value – knowing how to research a person – understanding their own comfort levels. I’m rambling a bit, but I hope my point is coming across. I appreciate your feedback.
Hello!
My name is Bailey Hammond and I’m a student in Dr. Strange’s EDM310 course at the University of South Alabama. I have to say, I thought this post was highly applicable. I’ve often wondered myself at the standards that teachers must put up with in order to be “taken seriously” in the workplace. (The shoes are what really kill me.) The comparison you made between teacher attire in the United States versus The Netherlands is remarkable. It never occurred to me that elsewhere the teachers are not required to wear business clothes and uncomfortable shoes. I think it’s great that they don’t in The Netherlands. When I’m a teacher I’d be a much happier if I was able to dress in comfortable clothes and I’d probably be more productive.
Also, I understand where you were coming from in reference to the internet and connections between teachers and students. It’s such a delicate topic that it’s hard to find a right way to go about it. It helps if students and teachers can communicate outside of school if there are issues or the students need help. But at the same time, we can’t completely discount the dangers that the internet provides. I agree that the instances of “inappropriate” relationships aren’t as common as we are led to believe (I never heard of any from my school or even county), but the fact still remains that the parents will fear any commingling. Especially between teachers and students of the opposite sex. It’s a sad fact; it’s true.
Anyway, I wanted to thank you for this post and let you know that I will be summarizing my posts to your blog and posting the summaries on my own class blog sometime in the next week or two.
Thanks!
Bailey
Bailey,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this post. It’s always great to get feedback from other teachers. I also wanted to say that I just noticed a smoking lounge in the teacher’s lounge at this same school the other day! And there’s a smoking area for students outside. People here are allowed to smoke and purchase alcohol at 16, so it makes sense that there would be a section for them outside. It was still a shock to me, though, coming from the “tobacco-free zones” of American public high schools.
I wanted to comment on your discussion of the possible social networking ban in Virginia. I found your words “the dangers that the internet provides” to be interesting. I think we need to change our perception of the internet since all of those dangers – and more – exist right out in the real world where our children are. We don’t walk around with our children on leashes because we heard about a few abductions. We know those are rare and that with the right supervision we can greatly minimize the risk of our children being abducted. To me the same is true for on the internet. Sure, there is the possibility of something bad happening in the real world, but we don’t terrorize our children and scare them about all the possible scary things that can happen to them out there, because doing so would keep all the good things away from them as well. To me, framing the internet as a scary place full of predators and banning collaboration between students and teachers is the same as keeping a child indoors away from the outside world – sure, you might be protecting her, but at what costs? We need supervision from parents and great teachers to be there to guide children in digital citizenship. A teacher might be the only adult a child connects with online and could be the person he turns to with questions about what information he should share about himself online and how to cultivate appropriate relationships online. I want to be there for my students, but Virginia is basically telling me “we trust you to teach kids inside the four walls of a school, but just in case you’re a child molester we won’t let you talk to them online. Instead we’ll let them roam the internet alone. It’s safer that way.” Seems a pretty high price to pay to lower liability a few notches!
I really enjoyed reading your blog post, and I agree with your points made. I personally do not think attire plays a role of determining the level of respect a teacher receive. I think a teacher who demands respect will gain it regardless to their attire. A teacher will actually perform their job better if they are satisfied and comfortable while doing it, not walking around in painful shoes or a hot tie around their neck. I honestly see the purpose of administrators stressing the dress codes of teachers. the main focus should be on the students. Yea, of course their should be a limit to what a teacher wear, but it should not be limited to only “Professional attire”!!
Great Post!!!!!
Thank you for your kind words, KaShondra! I’m looking forward to working at a school next year where the dress is casual and most decisions are left up to the teachers.