Professional dress in schools

It's affecting our educational outcomes

I’ve been trying to figure out why I care about how we dress in schools, as teachers. I never liked pajama day, even as a new teacher, because it’s just ridiculous to me. However, one pajama day a few times a year will not break the system. I even think school spirit gear on Fridays is great, and I’m a fan of that.

But the overall standard of dress by teachers has dwindled to jeans, joggers, leggings, sweatshirts, tshirts, sneakers. All of those things.

I’ve gotten into more than one online conversation about how it shouldn’t matter how a teacher dresses. A teacher is a professional and if that professional can do their job professionally in jeans or leggings or Nike dunks, that professional can do their job in jeans, leggings, and Nike dunks.

I’m being repetitive because the argument is repetitive. It’s always the same thing: we don’t treat teachers like professionals because they don’t earn the type of money a professional would earn yet….they are the only “professional” I know of who insists on wearing those types of clothing items to their professional work environment. If a lawyer or a doctor or an accountant or a businessperson of some sort insisted on the same, it wouldn’t make any sense. Yes, doctors often wear scrubs but that’s the uniform for the job. (Give me a teacher uniform, I’d wear it.)

Teachers actually act like this any time you try to tell them what to do. They screech and shriek about autonomy. Autonomy to teach (because they know how to do it best), autonomy to guide their own professional development (because they know what’s important for them to know and what’s not), autonomy to dress how they want (because they can teach Just As Well in jeans, and wearing heels or blouses or a tie does not make them a better teacher).

Well, I would argue that it does.

When you look professional, you act more professional. When you act more professional, students see you not as an equal, but as a leader.

Which brings me to point number two:

Lately, we’re talking about how students don’t actually know anything and don’t actually learn real information in school. I remember being forced to take notes on medieval history in 7th grade. 7th graders I know don’t even know what medieval means. This is traced back to the fact that we’ve done such a poor job of teaching students how to read over the last 5+ years; if they can’t read, they can’t learn more information. We’ve also completely stopped teaching prospective teachers the art of direct instruction. I remember my own mentor teacher explaining the best place in the room to stand when giving a spelling test (they should always be able to see your mouth form the words), for example.* I use a document camera to demonstrate every single thing I want them to do; if we don’t teach kids how to do things, they won’t ever learn how to do things. This all makes pretty obvious sense.

*Spelling tests are often not even given now because it’s seen as stressful to students and unnecessary.

So we are at the point of not teaching content knowledge, kids aren’t learning how to read fluently, and they aren’t learning how to do math with automaticity. What we are incredibly focused on in 2025 is making sure all needs of all students are “met”. If they need a coat, shoes, lunch, breakfast, snack, after-school care, before-school care, therapy, toys for Christmas, free activities for families, school supplies: we do all of that. Our nation’s schools are slowly evolving into a warped version of a YMCA.

Which, none of that is bad, as long as it doesn’t usurp the role of the parent (which it can, but that’s another story). These can be positives as long as we are still fulfilling our primary purpose as schools…but we’re not. We’re not teaching kids effectively for one reason or another. Every school must troubleshoot this on their own but, across the board, that’s the status of our nation’s public schools.

This is why it’s important that teachers dress like educators who are trying to raise the bar and the standards with high expectations, and not like workers or volunteers at the local community center.