A Change Would Do You Good - Dressing the Part of a Teacher

This adventure is among the scariest ones for me this year--as it is a fashion adventure! Bear with me, and try not to laugh at me too hard...

Anyone who knows me even remotely well probably knows how little I am interested in fashion. In college I was that guy who always wore T-shirts (that were often too big anyway) and rarely dressed to impress. My younger brother is an especially thoughtful dresser (and with taste that is both very trendy and somewhat pricey), and I just never got it.

I let my resistance to preoccupation with fashion carry over in China when there were no expectations of me. I had no reason to change. I wore the nice clothes my parents had gotten for me over the years when I started observing at my placement this fall. When the cold weather came, I wore all the nice sweaters my mother sent up from St. Louis, which were all old, way out of style, and too big. I looked like a square in the classroom. One student even jokingly compared one of my sweaters to a confederate flag. At that moment, I laughed at and appreciated the boy's humor (he is not malicious), but also realized that my refusal to care about fashion forced me into feeling uncomfortable with my dress and ultimately less confident in the classroom.

There are many many understandable and inevitable reasons why I felt so uneasy in the classroom in Redford for so much of the Fall that I got distracted from this simple fact: I was not comfortable at all in my own clothes! Not only did I probably show this in my demeanor, my clothes surely sent more messages than I am/was aware of. My college self would call this superficial or shallow, but it is the shallow truth: in high schools, no matter who you are (teacher, student, administrator, parent, etc.), YOU GET JUDGED BY YOUR APPEARANCE. I am not saying my wardrobe has been a fatal flaw and that my students have pigeonholed me. Quite the contrary, actually, I would say that I have fairly decent rapport with my students from my first days of teaching. But this rapport comes from my interactions and classroom demeanor as well. I am also not saying that I wish to dress to impress a bunch of teenagers. All I AM saying is that there are many facets to how people present themselves at any given moment, and we are always sending messages to people whether we want to be or not. And this probably applies more at high schools than many other places. So...

I did the unthinkable over Thanksgiving Break. I went shopping for clothes on Black Friday! I know--I know--those of you who personally know me are probably about to call "bulls**t" or point at me and yell "hypocrite!" To be clear I didn't even go on purpose. It was a chance to hang out with my friends Renault and Haoran, and since I was only home for 48 hours, I took it! Renault took me to Banana Republic. Renault is a guy who dresses quite well--he has a reputation for his good sense of style, and his gentle peer pressure was enough to turn me on to a simple black and white Argyle sweater to wear over a collared shirt. It was 50% off, so it was actually well priced. I bought it! It looks good, is modest (i.e. simple), but also somewhat stylish. I got home from that excursion at 3:00 AM, and by then, excitement had built up quite a bit. I was actually going to dress in something I liked and chose myself! I was going to express my style in the classroom (and for a teacher who is still trying to find his teacher style and voice, this is very exciting)! When I woke up hours later I realized that one cool new teaching ensemble would not be enough. I would want to wear it every day, and soon I will be in the school five days a week. I need to actually start investing in a larger wardrobe.

Very shortly after I realized this I was given a proposition from my mother to go on an errand with her. Family time. Naturally, I went with her but then went next door (to Target) thinking I would look at (but not buy of course) DVDs. I can't even calculate how quickly I was in the clothing section staring at slightly cheaper Argyle sweaters in a bigger variety of colors (and colors that my eccentric taste liked!). Now I am not a math major, but I do know that Target + Black Friday = Affordable, so I got a few more sweaters (Michigan will have a long winter) and collared shirts. It will be nice to not wear one of three shirts everytime I go in to teach, and to actually have clothing that I can take pride in. And it matches my frugal nature! Dressing nice does not mean dressing awkwardly or going against my own personal style. As obvious as this must be for so many people, it took me 24 years to learn this!
I consider this shopping an investment. I want to do everything I can to make myself more comfortable in front of the kids, visually define myself as a professional (to supplement my professional behavior), and also bring my own quirky (but also down to Earth) style and personality into the classroom. Let's get this straight: I am still a plain and simple Target and Meijer's guy at heart... but at least I'll look better. I never want to give the impression that I have my finger on the rapid pulse of the fashion world. The truth is though that my best teaching days so far were the ones where I found the freedom and security to be myself WHILE sticking to the agenda for the class. At my high school, given my introversion and highly sheltered background, this may be harder than it sounds.

Also, I want the students to see me the way I want to be seen. I used to (in my idealism) think that this is a purely figurative goal, but I am finding out that it is ALSO a literal one. I was amazed how some of my University of Michigan colleagues reacted to the new look in class yesterday. We will see how my first day actually teaching in the new clothes goes tomorrow!