Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The End of Casual-Man!

There's one fact in this world that cannot be disputed, and that fact is that I'm a handsome fella. This reality has been difficult enough for my friends and coworkers in the past, as my handsomeness has acted as a distraction for so long. (The women all want me, and the men all want to be me. I suppose that some of the men want me as well.) This year, I have made things even worse for them, as I've started to dress up a little bit for work. By doing this, I have gone from handsome fella to insanely-gorgeous stud.

Why the change? Well, to get a little serious now, a lot of it is change for the sake of change. I felt like mixing things up and trying something different. I was feeling that I want to have different clothes for work than what I wear around the house. For my first eight years of teaching, I pretty much dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. When the weather got warm, I wore shorts. I used to say that I'd start dressing up as soon as we got air conditioning, but once that came around I still hadn't dressed any differently. (To be honest, if we still didn't have it, I might still be wearing the T-shirts though.)

I remember in one of my first teaching credential classes, we were having discussion groups about what we don't like seeing teachers do. One group went off on how they thought so many teachers were dressed unprofessionally, and the kids would never respect them if they continued to dress that way. I raised my hand and pointed out that I didn't dress up, and I really didn't have a lot of problems with getting kids to respect me.

The thing is, when I look back on my teachers, you couldn't tell the ones I respected and the ones that I thought were morons by the way they dressed. Some of my favorites were casual; some of the jerks were in ties. Also, I've been doing this job long enough to know that these kids don't necessarily respect a teacher by the way he or she dresses. We have had plenty of teachers who wear nice shirts and ties who have absolutely no control of the classroom. The bottom line is that the way you dress is irrelevant.

Sure, I've had a principal once suggest that I dress up a little bit more. I even had a student tell me that I should. (And he's arrogant enough to believe that he's the reason why I started wearing nicer clothes, I bet.) Beyond that though, it just hasn't been an issue.

As of now, I don't see much of a difference with the way I'm treated by the kids. I'm not sure if it's having the desired psychological effect, but I do know that I've received a lot of nice compliments from coworkers. (See: Fella, handsome). One thing's for sure though, I'm never going to wear any damn ties. I hate those things - they feel like I'm wearing a noose.

This "Stan Lee Challenge" was inspired by The Amazing Spider-Man #18: "The End of Spider-Man!"

3 comments:

Andrew Nolan said...

I never complimented you once, Mr. Rodgers. I only have eyes for Blackwell. All others pale in comparison.

Lance Christian Johnson said...

I seem to recall you not being able to keep your hands off of me.

Cynthia Anderson said...

Pretty much my all time favorite teacher, Mr. Charlie Lynch, always wore extremely hip clothing, well not really hip for the time, as it was the early 90's and he sported a LOT of retro/vintage 1960s era gear that I thought was amazingly cool. I clearly remember this about him, almost as much as I remember him letting me write an essay in exactly why I refused to read Return of the Native to make up for failed pop-quizzes. So, you see, at least to me, clothing (at least in part if it is amazing and vintage) DOES make the teacher!