The Wawascene was created by Dr. Mark Stock, former Superintendent of the Wawasee Community School Corporation. Due to its local popularity, Dr. Stock has left the blog site to future Wawasee administrators.

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Friday, March 04, 2005

Does The Way We Dress Affect The Way The Public Sees Us?

Over on the Whitko Blog Site, Superintendent Jeff Hendrix has posed an interesting question to his staff. Click on the link above (or on the side of this page) and scroll down to the article about work attire in different professions.

He is not opposed to dress down days (nor am I) but he just reminds us that we should use them carefully.

Why? There is a school of thought in education, that over the years we may have unknowingly eliminated ourselves from the more elite and respected professions.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, the way we dress does affect the way the public sees us. However, I don't believe it to be in the way that is being suggested.

I believe over-dressing or being too professional looking can also send off a message to students, parents and the community that we, who work with their children, are unapproachable and cold. We also appear more like a lot of our community members when we dress in a similar fashion. While I think it important to not be dressing to casually and certainly not inappropriately, we should also remember that students and parents are comfortable with those who don't appear "better than" them and those who don't
appear "stuffy."

There is a fine line between the two and we should take that into consideration as well. There is a lot of things that go into our profession being seen as professional and this is just one small portion. Additionally, perhaps we could all dress better if we were actually paid like professionals! :)

Anonymous said...

Dress down days are okay to a point. At the end of February they had beach day at Syracuse Elementary. The next few days, some students wore shorts. I see nothing wrong with this. If you are going to have beach day in Feb. what do you expect.

Teachers come out of school with no coats on and yet they expect the students to dress for the weather.

Some role models the teachers are for the students. Monkey see, Monkey do!

Tomorrow is p.j day. I can only guess what to expect next.

Get with the program, do this according to the weather. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out!