Dress for Success: Come looking like a slob... what?

[David Tibbles]

I believe teachers are professionals. All of us are educated; many of us have the official declaration of being the “Master” of our fields hanging on our walls. We strongly care about the fruits of our labor. We arrive to work on a daily basis, including Saturdays and Sundays, and we all know we sacrifice our personal time away from our families and homes, often without pay, for the sake of accomplishing our goals with the kids.

I don’t doubt we care about our work.

Why, then, do so many people not do everything in their power to act as a professional? This discussion can lead several different directions. However, I would like to focus on one simple behavior we all have direct control over. This behavior has a large positive impact on students, parents, other faculty, and administrators. This behavior is so simple to enact, one would hardly have to change a daily routine to enact. Frankly, this behavior I feel slightly irritated and ashamed is an issue to address: teachers dressing like professionals.

I often hear teachers complain about bring treated like children or prisoners by administrators. I don’t disagree. However, when people dress as nationally board-certified teacher and author Brian Crosby states in his book Smart Kids, Bad Schools: 38 Ways to Save America’s Future that teachers often come dressed for the beach. I wish his analysis wasn’t true. However, I notice casual Friday has become casual Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as well. At my school’s parent teacher conferences a week ago, only a handful of teachers dressed up to meet with parents. I consider parents to be the CEOs of the clients I serve. I couldn’t imagine talking to a CEO of a company without looking professional. This week I saw a teacher in shorts during the school day. I was baffled for a couple reasons: a) I’m not sure shorts are acceptable for casual Friday, let alone for casual Wednesday, and b) the weather was in the 40s and 50s here in Southern Missouri; I figure shorts would be rather cold. People treat professional looking people different. People treat professional people with more dignity and respect; like professionals.

Both Google and Microsoft have met with the city of Los Angeles abo... I wonder, when the business representatives made their appeals and presentations to the city council, did the representatives wear t-shirts and jeans? Google won this battle. Maybe the Google reps showed up with a tie. I consider my job of teaching children to be more important than selling an e-mail server. The business leaders, however, I doubt would even think of not looking as professional as possible.

As a speech and debate coach, I teach my students about the importance of professional dress and appearance. Dress and appearance is important. Students who consistently win always look professional the entire tournament. When one of the few students who is in pants with holes hanging below their waistline places, those students look like buffoons compared to the five other professionals on stage.

I require my students to be in their tournament dress from the time we enter the bus on Friday to the time we exit the bus on Saturday. Students ask me if they may take their suit coat off: no. Students ask me if they can wear their “nice looking tank-tops”: no. The best part? I don’t take my tie and suit coat off either. I hold myself to the same standard I hold my students too. I appreciate when students from other teams comment on my dress or on my students’ dress. I’ve had students not listen to me about appearance (usually in the form of sneaking off to the bathroom and changing), and the judging pool, mostly parents and business representatives from the community, has rewarded those students with low ranks and losses. I once had two students follow the professional dress standard on Friday and perform their piece at a tournament and qualified to semi-finals in two events on Saturday. When they appeared on Saturday, they had hot-pink hair. They lost in semi-finals in both those events. The comment appearing on the ballots: lose the pink hair. I guess people can’t take people with hot-pink hair seriously. People treat and perceive others differently based on how those people dress.

At these same tournaments, the dress of the teachers and coaches are just as interesting to examine. Frankly, Missouri is a powerhouse in competitive speech and debate. Missouri is proud to boast three of the most competitive districts in the country. About half of the top 20 schools in the nation come from Missouri. At tournaments, you will find coaches dressing in two ways: a) professional dress and b) hoodies and jeans. I am ashamed to admit I used to be in the hoodies and jeans category, even though I know the research I’ll cite in a moment and I always dress like a professional at school (apparently in my mind, tournaments wasn’t part of my job?). I, however, took a look around the holding pen of coaches and students at the tournaments. I started looking at the teachers and coaches I admire because of their success with students. These schools rank in the top 20 in the nation and place in the sweepstakes at nearly every tournament they attend. They all are in suits and dresses. They look like professionals. They demand people treat them like professionals. Other coaches treat them with dignity and respect, and the other coaches listen to their words as if their words were gospel. Most important, their students succeed. This year, I brought my professional dress to the tournaments. The coaches who don’t dress up had a mini-intervention with me. After explaining why I’m dressed up they said, “Oh, you’re going to be one of them.”

Darn right I’m going to be one of the successful teachers. Not surprising, the same teachers who hound me about dressing up are the same coaches who mock me for watching my students perform at the tournaments and coaching them between rounds instead of hanging out in the hospitality room and eating doughnuts all day. Silly me.

Perhaps my strongest argument comes from decades of research on teacher dress in the classroom. May I lead everyone to two books: The Handbook of Instructional Communication: Rhetorical and Relational Perspectives and An Introduction to Communication in the Classroom: The Role of Communication in Teaching and Training. The first book includes a thorough summation of all the research (including references to the primary sources) on communication and human behavior in the classroom including the summation of research on teacher dress in the classroom. The second book is a companion book to the handbook providing a brief explanation of the research and findings. The research shows students view teachers who dress professionally as more competent, caring, and trustworthy. The students tend to view professionally dressed teachers with higher affect for the teacher professionally and higher affect for the content the teacher teaches. Students view professionally dressed teachers as more nonverbally immediate. Students also perceive teachers who dress professionally as committing less teacher-misbehaviors. All of these concepts are correlated with student perceptions of self-achievement. If anyone would like an online resource to these concepts, then visit the website of Dr. James C. McCroskey who has a page of links to decades of the research posted. Use the find function in your browser to narrow the search.

I have several students who saw me in public in my regular clothes, and their shock of seeing me in regular clothes is priceless. A current student who saw me at the mall buying glasses in a polo shirt and khaki shorts was nearly speechless. A former student saw me at a theatre in late Spring, with temperatures in the 90 degree range, told me I was not allowed to wear shorts and forced me to pose for a picture in my “normal” clothes. These examples just show me the students perceive me with value, dignity, and respect; all of these perceptions are requisites for higher student success.

If ironing a shirt in the morning will help the kids, then I’ll leave my ironing board and iron out, sitting in the ready to serve the kids.

[Addie Gaines]

I think professional dress is important. I have had elementary kids ask me, "Why do you always dress nice?" or "Why do you always wear dresses?" My answer is that I dress up for them because they are important and I want to nice for them. I ask them if they would rather look at a principal that is dressed nice or one that is dressed sloppy and they always prefer one that looks nice.

Typically on Fridays, I will wear jeans, but usually with a sweater or a dressier shirt. Last Friday, a parent came into the office and I was wearing jeans. Her comment was that she had never seen me not dressed in a suit before and she had known me for three years!

(I do occasionally dress more comfortably if we are on a field trip or something so I can have fun.)

[David Tibbles]

Steve, please refer to my original post about the decades of scientific research showing student perceptions of the teacher do impact students learning, many of these studies focus on teacher dress. The evidence is beyond circumstancial.

Communication is a receiver based world. Our actions and behaviors. including professional dress, have a significant and real affect. Does wearing doctor's clothes make one able to do surgery? No. Am I going to let someone not in doctor's clothes do surgery on me or a loved one? Nope.

When people ask me why I'm dressed up, my response has never been, "because I'm better than you." The response is always and will always be, "because I'm a professional." If people probe further, then I say, "administrators, parents, and students respond more positively when I dress professionally."

I don't give in to the fantasy that what I'm doing in the classroom isn't as important or professional as being a lawyer or a fill-in-the-corporate blank. I refuse to be treated with less dignity and respect than a caretaker for America's future deserves. Only when we all start acting like the professionals we all know we are, will we stop accepting less than we are worth.

[Steve J. Moore]

I posted this after David's last response and thus, just read his statement

"I fully understand correlation is not causation"

More support for the idea that this is a friendly discussion and not a solution-finding call-out :-) Cheers to everyone for their positive contributions and to David for being an amicable moderator on this very specific topic.

[Steve J. Moore]

I think this is an important conversation that the likes of Thomas, David, an Candace all have valid points. Yes, there are times to amp up your appearance and wear your very best, but that can't be every day. No matter how much we'd like to think it would, all teachers wearing suits every day wouldn't give us the respect of some other profession (I'm thinking of lawyers or fill-in-the-corporate-blank). It's a fantasy, and an expensive one at that.

I think Thomas is right to say that we can't expect to be viewed as authorities just because of the way that we dress, but David has a lot of circumstantial evidence on his side as well. People do tend to respect more well-dressed people, but that respect only sticks if they can back it up with respect-worthy skill and attitude.

I strongly do not think that student perceptions of a teacher are vital for their success. Does it play a role? Sure! But their view of themselves is much more important, and you can argue that your view of yourself (that affects your dress) influences that. However, whether or not I choose to wear jeans or slacks on any given day has infinitesimal bearing in the greater scheme of things when you consider student learning. Demonstration and dissemination of knowledge does not have to be logically tied to professional appearance.

That being said, I think there are many reasons to dress your best. Doing it to "help kids" is not one of them (pardon my strong phrasing David :). When not accompanied by a positive and professional attitude, dressing drastically different than your colleagues can send unwelcome ripples that (however much deserved) can be negative. If you're asked, "why the three-piece-suit?" and your only answer is something that equates to "I feel that I'm better than you," what you're doing is destructive and not constructive.

Instead, why not slowly adapt to your surroundings, check the norms and then make your next move (in attire choice in this case) based on small steps away from a norm with which you do not agree. Buffer and drastic changes with plentiful explanation and support.

Exactly the things you describe in your actions David, when you say that you coach your students between rounds rather than eat doughnuts. <--That is what makes you a stellar coach, not your suits. Our attire can symbolize the type of person we are, but it has little real affect on it I think. I try to dress like who I view myself as, but if I wear a doctor's lab coat every day I'm not going to be able to do open-heart surgery.

A lot of this is simply the way I operate as a teacher, but I think ultimately the kids are more important than how my peers in the profession view me.

Whew! What an intense forum David, thank you for posting!

[David Tibbles]

I thank you for your response, Mrs. Follis. I enjoyed your statements about the "clicky shoes." I remember my teachers in elementary school with "clicky shoes," and I am visiting in my mind the panic of everyone getting everything perfect (a.k.a. stopping doing all the bad stuff we were doing and getting our halos out... which pretty much was the evidence we shouldn't have been wearing halos).

The research is correlational; the nicer/professional people (admin, parents, and students) perceive your dress, the more the benefits I describe below. I fully understand correlation is not causation; I believe we make the choice on what we wear (thereby affecting perceptions) more so than perceptions choosing our clothes (although I do see how that is true on a small level as well).

In response to your question about comfort, I'll say the same to you as I tell my girls on the speech circuit: dress clothes need not be uncomfortable clothes. I tell them if they are wearing shoes with heels to the point they get blisters, back aches, or other such issues, then that is their fault! Wear professional shoes without the big heals!

Professional dress has adapted to be comfortable. I, personally, find dress clothes to be more comfortable and loose fitting than jeans and a sweatshirt. I like to test how "wrinkle free" and "iron free" clothes really are. My point is I don't think professional looks, comfort, and practicality in teacher dress are mutually exclusive.

Besides, I find, even with high school students, a well placed pretend conversation or stomping a little louder than normal outside the door can provide the same effect as the clickers!

Thanks everyone for posting feedback! I really do appreciate knowing what people think!

[Candace Follis]

I think this is a really important topic. I can recall back in my undergrad days doing a practicum with an elementary teacher who told me that her mentor always told her, "if you don't go home and want to change into something more comfortable, you weren't dressed correctly for work". I will admit that I do not often dress so nice that I am uncomfortable, but I certainly don't wear jeans (except on special occasion fundraisers), T-shirts, or sneakers. In fact, I have always touted the functionality of wearing "clicky shoes". Sure, it's not eloquent like your lovely and well researched article here, but there's something about the dress shoes (which inevitably cannot be worn with t-shirts). When I am walking down the hall or around my classroom, students can hear that I am close. I think this takes the "proximity" aspect of classroom management to an additional sense and the more aware of our presence, the better.

I suppose my only concern is about the in-between educators. What if you don't have to iron a pantsuit or wear pantyhose everyday yet you don't wear hoodies and flipflops? What about nice slacks and sweaters/blouses? I've always wondered about that first practicum I had - I want to be comfortable enough to focus on walking around the room and being able to speak with students individually who are still seated at their desks. Is there a respectable middle ground for someone who hates ironing? :)

Thanks for sharing this, David!

[Thomas Maerke]

Wow, I'm impressed. Thanks for the response. I've still got to say that the results change based on dress you describe in the second paragraph is a bit scary to me, but I'll chalk that up to my ignorance of the culture of debate tournaments.

[David Tibbles]

I don't argue image is the sole determinate of success, but rather plays a significant and meaningful role as one of the factors of success. I never argue simply dressing nice makes a good teacher. I'm sure many of us can cite many examples of teachers that, no matter how nice they dress, probably do not belong in the classroom. Does this fact deny the trend that students, parents, colleagues, and administrators treat well-dressed teachers with more respect? Absolutely not. Denying that trend not only contradicts my personal experience on making the dress code change, but also contradicts decades of research of not only studies in the educational classroom, but also even longer lines of research in other areas such as psychology and marketing.

Did my practices change? Nope. I always dress up at school; even on "casual Fridays." In the past, I just didn't dress up for tournaments as a coach, even though as a competitor I was always expected to dress up. I was a good coach, and my kids earned good results. Do my students receive even better results now that these students have always seen me dress as a professional? Absolutely. On the tournament political level, other coaches, who make competitive decisions about who faces whom and how the tournaments are run, give more credence to my concerns and objections, often resulting in more fair opportunities in the best interests of my students. If some lassie-faire coach tries to make an objection, especially against a political order of some of the most established and top coaches in the country, then at best that coach is going to be ignored.

My students also do better because of the answer to your question about whether students demeaned their teacher in a hoodie and jeans. Can I cite examples of where students from other teams have done this? Yes, but in truth, the general trend comes in the students viewing the teacher/coach more as a friendly comrade, and not as the teacher/coach. Many a time have I seen these coaches (who are my personal friends) try to actually coach the students, but the students just not take the coach... the teacher seriously. Students treat teachers who consistently dress professionally more as professional teachers.

The fact remains: the human mind views communication as a receiver based system. Image and perceptions do matter. This fact is not a misconceptions. This fact doesn't mean people can't be open and tolerant. If I'm going to Japan, then I know I better have a clue about the culture and behavioral faux pas in that culture. In this case, the educational benefits to teachers and to the students are numerous as documented in anecdotal, qualitative, and quantitative research. Again, if looking nice helps teachers help students, then why don't we all break out our best clothes to do our best?

[Thomas Maerke]

David, my response to this post is a bit mixed. What stands out to me is that your change in dress at Speech and Debate tournaments also meant that you became a successful coach. Did your practices as a coach change in any way, other than your look? I also find it interesting that the students of coaches who dressed professionally took the coaches word “as gospel.” Were those coaches in hoodies and jeans demeaned by their students? Adolescents’ perceptions, however insightful, are often skewed by the immediate and the external; should we be reinforcing the misconception that a person’s image determines success? I don’t think so, but that’s just my opinion.

[Christine Hollingsworth]

I just referenced this post on my FCCLA blog - http://mofccla.blogspot.com/2009/11/do-we-dress-for-success-anymore... Thanks for giving me permission to do so.