I think if elementary school teachers want to be respected as professional people we have to cut out a few things, first of which is “Pajama Day“. Imagine going to your workplace, say as a psychiatrist, attorney, international banker or salesperson donning slippers and pajamas over your underwear and then being forced to keep them on all day long. You don’t have to do that, do you? Well, guess what’s coming up in a school near you very soon?
Going to a staff meeting or having a parent conference in pajamas just feels, well…creepy. It’s even weird standing at the copy machine or going to the mailbox with other people witnessing what you normally would wear in bed and maybe even with somebody. I like to keep a bit of mystery. Most little kids don’t think teachers ever even leave school.. The mystique comes to an end when you’re standing there asking for children to be quiet and focus on their work when you’re in flannel plaid from head to toe.
Another thing we need to cut out is the dopey teacher fashion fads. Knit sweaters with red apples, rulers and pencils are just silly. I would consider wearing one if they were more realistic and had images of untied shoes, yanked out teeth or faces with tomato sauce or chocolate all over them. When was the last time you saw your physician in a cardigan with an embroidered stethoscope around the front, or maybe some nice hypodermic needs running up and down the arms? That would be friendly and unthreatening.
Anybody ever see any other professional woman wearing a canvas jumper with hand painted desk items on them? Me neither. They make ’em for teachers, though. They even make stupid stuff for the male teachers. There are the ties with letters of the alphabet and the ubiquitous apples sometimes with facial features, probably thinking something like, “I’m an apple, why am I on a grown man’s tie?”
Pajama days aren’t the only days of crazy ass costuming, either. We’re supposed to wear funny looking hair or silly hats, have dress alike day, wear sports apparel (what’s the official uniform for curling?) and the ever popular dress like a character in your favorite book day. I’m not sure how to dress like the woman in the Kama Sutra.
I don’t really get the whole school spirit thing, I never have. School should be spirited all the time. Do we really have to drum up enthusiasm? Is school such a bore every other day that the only way to pluck us from the depths of woe is to put us all in jammies? I don’t know. It’s just weird.
Watch, I’ll be the old lady put in charge of planning pajama and crazy hat days at the nursing home in a few years. It’ll serve me right.
