Silly Work Outfit

Well, I suppose it is time to come clean if I am going to be able to accurately describe the context of this outfit.  And besides, I don’t really think it is going to affect my life one way or the other for the blog-o-sphere to know how I am employed.  So…. ready for it?  Here goes nothing – – I am a middle school math teacher! 

Crazy huh?  Well I think I am to have been working with this age group for over 20 years!  Yikes, am I really that old?  Why yes indeed I am! 

Okie dokie, so now that is officially out of the way, this past week we had spirit week for our upcoming standardized tests.  On Friday it happened to be “meme day.”  I kept asking everyone, what exactly are you going to do for meme day and they kept explaining to me what a meme is.  Uh, sorry kiddos, I understand what a meme is, what I don’t understand is how is someone supposed to dress as a meme??  Whatever, right? 

My wife and I each have a shirt with a funny little saying on it, so we decided to wear those for our meme spirit day.  My wife’s shirt is a pig eating bacon, thinking to itself, “yummm.”  Funny huh?  And you can obviously see what mine says.  If you don’t know the meaning behind this saying, it is going against conforming to the norm.  I always think of it as the students are the penguins!  Ha! 

The day that I wore this outfit, it was about an hour or two into my work day when it occurred to me that I was dressed fully in female clothes!  Funny as it was the first time ever.  I normally wear pretty much exactly what is pictured, except for wearing a male work Polo shirt instead of the silly penguin shirt.  I thought it was also pretty darn interesting as I normally don’t wear such a tight shirt to work.  You know, with the boobs and all, tight shirts are interesting!  Oh, but I was too lazy to shave on this morning, so I had a bit of a goatee! 

You may be wondering how exactly things go with dressing the way that I dress while teaching 7th and 8th grade students.  You know that lovely age from about 12 – 14!!  Ha!  Lovely!  That is funny!  Well I will let you know, if you don’t already, typically middle school students are so super self conscious of themselves that they can barely focus on anything else.  Sometimes it is about half way through the school year before a student will loudly exclaim “wait, what, you paint your fingernails?!”  And then the whole class laughs, not at me, but at their fellow student! 

I once had a student directly ask why I dress the way that I do, and I told them that I do it to show them that it is okay to be different.  Many teachers tell them it is okay to be different, all while looking exactly the same as a typical teacher.  I tell them that even though at first I was terrified of being myself in front of them, that I do it because I am learning how to love myself for who I really am. 

Generally speaking after that conversation with my classes, they clap.  Yup, that is how awful the little buggers are!  Ha!  Seriously the students are awesome.  And yeah, I do work at a pretty rough school.  New teachers have been known to run scared from this place!  But as well, this is not the only school that I have worked at that I have been dressed in a mixed gender manner.  I think this is the 4th school.  And at no time have I received any negative feedback from my students.  They have questions for sure, but they accept my answers. 

So, um, yeah, there ya go!

Love you!

Love yourselves!

Seriously, give it a whirl!  Who knows, maybe you’ll like it and start treating yourself better!