A few years ago, a meme was making the rounds via e-mail of the most prominent lines in Star Wars rewritten so that the most significant word in each line was “pants”.
So, instead of, “you came in that ship? you’re braver than I thought,” Princess Leia was imagined to say, “you came in those pants? you’re braver than I thought.”
Today, while reading blogs, an ad for Ilianowear.com appeared on my screen, and I thought, “I want to teach some day in those pants.”
One of the challenges we face as teachers is that we work in a very conformist profession. Each school has some sort of normalized dress code, often conservatively casual. Deviation from the norm is frowned on in many ways. Yet the number of my colleagues with discreet tattoos is increasing every year, and it is clear that creativity in clothes is one of the ways that humans signal creativity-in-thought to one another.
So are we going to continue to drive out the odd duck dressers in our profession in favor of those who put on a coat and tie or a conservative floral print dress every year? Or are we going to find creative dressers who can help our students become creative thinkers, and ultimately people who are happy with who they are?
Oh, and please don’t buy the pants for me. Not until I lose a good thirty pounds or so. I’m working at it, but don’t rush me. 🙂
