Miss Fit and the Need for Professionalism in Public Schools
So I know this teacher, let’s call her Miss Fit, she is professional, sophisticated and never gives up on the task at hand, acting like an executive in a world dominated by low expectations . . .
One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding the education crisis is that all public school teachers are unintelligent and lazy, among other amazing characteristics. This naïveté is best summed up by the quote, “those who can do, those who can’t teach.” Teachers are an easy target to pin America’s education crisis on. Maybe its because we all remember that teacher we could not stand to be with for fifty minutes a day – the one who took their life issues out on us when we were kids – or maybe its because the media only covers educators the likes of the tenured teacher who reads the paper, while his students play dice in the corner. Whatever the reasons for the emergence of the “lackluster public school teacher” stereotype are, we, as a nation, believe that public school teachers are the Brutus’s of the education crisis – a bunch of burnouts who jab the final dagger into the last bits of hope our nation’s most in-need students have at a life or prosperity. Et tu Ms. or Sir? But not all teachers are bad teachers.
Take Miss Fit for example. Everyday, Miss Fit arrives to school an hour early to prepare and stays at least an hour after the last bell for free of charge tutoring. In fact, as this post is being written, Miss Fit is holding Saturday school for a group of students who are struggling in her class. Miss Fit is intelligent, as well as driven, challenging the prevailing stereotype public school teachers now possess. She holds a masters degree in her subject area and came to the classroom from the business world. She embodies a wealth of academic and real world knowledge that she embroiders into her students’ minds on a daily basis. A seamstress of unbridled learning. Just being around her, one becomes smarter. It is like some weird type of osmosis. Literally, one time after talking to her I went home and watched Jeopardy (because my life is just that exciting these days) and could answer almost every question. Unfortunately, no one was around to see this feat of knowledge.
While the Jeopardy incident may have been a coincidence (or just an extension of my own dormant intelligence), Miss Fit’s positive results with her students are not. And her success as a teacher who serves in the heart of the education crisis can be summed up with one word: professionalism. Miss Fit runs her classroom like a business, acting as CEO of a board centered on knowledge and principled on high expectations. She is always well put together; wearing the type of professional clothing one would see at most profitable shops and companies. There is never doubt that she runs the classroom. Her pantsuits, blouses and high heels make her a square peg in the round hole of sweat pants and t-shirts regularly adorned by her colleagues. At faculty meetings, her business attire causes Miss Fit to stand out like Donald Trump at some type of Occupy Wall Street protest or collective chant or sit in or whatever they are doing now.
Even more so, Miss Fit lives up to her name in that she is healthy, preferring to showcase a bottle of water over the usual teacher preferred soda (Big Red to be exact) on her neatly organized desk. Her decision to give students vegetables and fruit over candy is a welcome reprise in a community plagued with diabetes and other aliments caused by a widespread lack of proper nutrition. She is a role model and a master educator. A professional in a sea of amateurs, who, despite any common upbringing or background with her students, is able to connect with them, teach them and make them better citizens. Even the boy who likes to stand on his chair and scream, performs well in Miss Fit’s class.
It goes without saying that our nation’s public schools need more Miss Fits and the fact she is an outcast among her colleagues begs a central question: why is the teaching profession allowed to be unprofessional? Why is an individual tasked with molding the future of our country’s children and, as a result, our nation’s ultimate destiny, permitted to dress like a mall walker, exude little to no intelligence or drive and run a classroom like a circus, as opposed to business? When did teaching stop being professional? I would bet my low salary that when teaching became unprofessional, the schools started to fail.
In order to be taken seriously by their students, teachers need to be clear professionals in the classroom. They need to be the adults in the room. Think about it this way, if any of the candidates running for president started giving policy speeches in sweat pants, acted like they did not care about their job and spoke of completely false information no one would consider voting for them (I’ll ask you give some leeway on the last example in order to thoughtfully consider the overall point). Let’s take it one step down: if you were looking to buy a car and the salesman looked like a he had just gotten out of bed, acted in a leisurely manner while speaking to you and did not understand the basics of the car in question, you would immediately leave and go to another lot. The problem is, many public school students, especially those in low-income districts, do not have he option of going to another lot. And if they do, that lot is full of the same type of lackluster salesmen. These students are stuck in a world of low expectations for teachers and, therefore, for them as well.
I will end on with this tidbit – if you will. This past summer, I had the honor of spending three hours with a Nashville principal who had turned around an extremely low performing, violence ridden school in one year. When I asked her how she did it, she explained that she got rid of those teachers who were unprofessional and unintelligent and hired individuals with masters, high performing teachers from other schools and people who were leaders in their respective fields. She told me the first thing she would do when interviewing a potential new teacher was give them a simple fraction equation. If they could not answer it, she would say, “thank you” and the interview would be over. Once hired, she meticulously watched her teachers. If she noticed they looked unprofessional or did not know what they were speaking of in the classroom, she would fire them on the spot. Within a few months, there was a waiting list to be interviewed for a position at her school, because word had spread about how competitive it was to get a job there. In one year’s time, this school everyone had written off was turned around.
In conclusion, the negative public school teacher stereotype did not just happen, nor is it some formulated conspiracy by those who dislike the teacher’s union. It happened because somewhere along the line we stopped demanding excellence from our teachers and, as a result, from our kids. It is no wonder that a school that hired professionals was able to succeed. We need more Miss Fits – educators who are professional, well put together and never give up on the task at hand – in our public school classrooms as an initial step in ending the education crisis.
GREAT POST!!! Couldn’t agree more! Another thing I really dislike is hearing a teacher or admin raise their voice. I know we’re all human, but in a majority of our urban schools we already have an issue with students YELLING in order to get their point across. Doesn’t help when you mirror that action.
I dislike “unprofessional” teachers…. How you dress and look is a reflection of how you actually feel about yourself. How will anyone, or your students, take you seriously when you don’t take any pride in yourself or your appearance?
Wow, really? I couldn’t disagree with this post. In my experience, there is absolutely zero correlation with dress and excellence in teaching. And what kind of dress are you really talking about – “business attire”. This is the sort of superficial critique of education that drives me crazy. If only schools were more “business-like”, or had hire standards of professionalism, kids would be learning more. I’m sorry, but where have you been for the past 3 decades?
Society discovered long ago that the clothes actually don’t make the man, his job does! Go ask the countless silicon valley start-ups that are raking in profits hand over fist through innovation and dedication whether wearing a jacket and tie contributes to the productivity of their employees.
No, this is merely a socially conservative, attitudinal bias dressed-up (no pun intended), as critical analysis. Just ask yourself whether people were more productive 50 years ago when everybody wore formal work attire. Were there no slackers then?
Mr. Rector,
Thank you for your comment and for bringing a different point of view. That is the point of this website – to have civil discussions aimed at thoughtful solutions and bold actions.
That being said, I must politely disagree with you. Proper attire is one part of professionalism, which is part of a larger set of issues that perpetuate the American education crisis.
Teaching is considered by some to no longer be a professional job. No matter how you want to debate the merit of this assertion, it is a true perception held by many and this perception did not just appear from no where. Teachers must act professional at all times in the classroom to be taken seriously by society and students. We cannot have public school teachers who are unintelligent, lack drive and act more as a friend than an educator to their students when teaching. In other words, teachers must be professional. And, in my opinion, professionalism includes but is not limited to, professional attire.
Now, teachers don’t need to show up to work dressed as Don Drapper but attire plays a role in creating a professional atmosphere. Whether you think this is some wrongful construct of society or not, it is the truth. Lets put it this way, would you listen to a policeman’s instruction if he was not in uniform, would the precision of the military exist if every servicemen wore baggy sweat pants as teachers are allowed to? Even simpler, would you take an account seriously if he or she was not dressed in professional attire, buy a car from a man in a tank top, vote for a candidate who did not do their hair?
Attire alone will not solve the problem at hand but it is one of many steps that needs to be taken in order to solve the education crisis. I don’t think professionalism is “social conservatism.” In fact, it was Mr. Alinsky who told those who seek change to put on a suit and shave their beards. Professional attire is just common sense for one who seeks to create a serious atmosphere – something lacking in many of our nation’s low performing schools.
Thanks again. I can tell you are going to stimulate some great conversations.
You know, it’s funny, after posting that I had a heated debate with my wife, who is something of a “fashionista”. I stand by my claim that your view is of a part of social conservatism, in that it exists along a spectrum of adherence to a particular and arbitrary set of social norms; multiculturalism and ethnic chauvinism would represent the poles of such an axis, itself a piece of authoritarian vs, non-authoritarian values. So, my claim would be that our respective views are largely a function of the relative importance – the sacredness – we place on the particular cultural value of dress, and the degree to which we feel it ought to be enforced as a cultural norm.
I think the question of whether dress correlates with intelligence, passion, commitment to excellence, etc. is an empirical one, although I’m not aware of any studies that have been done in this area with enough detail to be useful in our debate. I can only attest to the examples I have given, and maintain that I have seen more than enough amazing teaching from teachers who taught in jeans and t-shirts.
I see no reason at all why this couldn’t be the case. If a teacher has high expectations of his students, is well-prepared, knowledgeable, consistent, creative, and engaging, whether or not he is wearing a tie is not going to matter. On the other hand, a male teacher wearing a tie and jacket, or a female teacher in heels and a pantsuit who is disorganized, unprepared, and neither creative nor engaging is still going to teach poorly. It appears to me the case you are trying to make is a correlation versus causation fallacy. It might be the case that more formal dress correlates with the qualities that a good teacher make, yet that does not represent causation.
As for what the public thinks of teachers, if they have a perception of teachers as unprofessional, I think that has a lot more to do with ignorance and political propaganda than anything else. In my experience, teachers are no more or less professional than anyone else, despite the fact that our job can’t really compare with anything else out there. The fact that poor schools are failing has nothing to do with standards of dress, or even teacher behavior, and everything to do with the levels of human and societal capital that poor kids bring into class.
Honestly, I’m not even sure that it is the public who complains about teachers, or holds them in dim regard (teachers consistently poll quite well, and, anecdotally, friends will routinely praise the work we do), but rather the punditocracy and political class who have a seriously flawed perspective of education and the real source of its challenges. To the extent that the public shares this view, it is more likely the case that they base their views not on a realistic view of teachers but the political parroting of media talking points.
So, forget professionalism, I say. It is a red herring. Let’s level the playing field so that the job of teaching in poor schools is comparable with that of affluent schools, and invest the resources required so that disadvantaged kids’ futures will rest on a solid foundation of support services, and not the superficial question of whether or not their teacher polishes his or her shoes.
So I concede I am not going to win you over with the idea that teachers so dress profession to be taken seriously, as a Senator, Salesman, Sailor or even student would.
I will keep pushing you on the overall idea of professionalism though. Surely, you cannot disagree that the teacher should be the unquestionable authority in a classroom and that he or she should act in the most professional manner at all times when students and co-workers are present.
I understand the argument that the “unprofessional teacher” is an archetype created for political gain – on both ends mind you. But this archetype did not just develop from thin air. There is a void of professionalism rampant throughout our public schools. There have been times other teachers have made fun of me because I wear a tie to work everyday. What type of attitude is that?
I think professionalism should be measured and weighted into a comprehensive system of evaluation that determines things such as tenure, extra pay and hiring or firing. Whether or not this would include appearance, is, up for debate . . . I guess.
Would love to hear others weigh in on this conversation.
“…the teacher should be the unquestionable authority in a classroom and that he or she should act in the most professional manner at all times when students and co-workers are present.”
I completely agree. As for the tie, you would have to promise not to make fun of my Scooby Doo lunchbox!