Looking the part... How to make people believe you are what you want to be.

I slathered my lipstick on a little too thick in the morning and it caused me to make a face at my reflection. I recalled talking to a student last year who was wearing too much makeup and thinking "oh my goodness, I can't take you seriously while you look like this." But the thing was, I wasn't on my way to school, I was on my way to judge a color guard competition. It would be difficult to be taken seriously as a guard or dance judge if I didn't wear some makeup.

That's the thing about the wide variety of activities and professions we have in our world; they all look different. When we are young, we are told that we should express ourselves and be who we want to be. As we get older, we are told to dress more professional and look professional. But being in two vastly different careers as I am, I have found that the definition of "professional" has a lot more flex than we are teaching to our students. And it's such a big piece of being successful - looking the part that you want to play.

If I'm going to give a presentation in front of the school board, I am going to dress up as clean and straight-laced as I can. This would include a button-down shirt, slacks, and maybe even a jacket or vest. I wouldn't dare wear my Zumba instructor clothes because one look at me and nobody would be listening to any of the words coming out of my mouth, because they would be internally giggling to themselves about my clothes. On the other hand, I wouldn't even dream of wearing a suit to a Zumba class! And wearing the bright colors of clothing and lipstick and whatever in Zumba is fun and inspiring to the students there, so it's the appropriate and professional thing to wear in that situation. When I'm teaching biology, my favorite thing to wear is a polo or a blouse and slacks. When I'm judging color guard competitions it's a polo and khakis for sure. The look changes to fit what I'm doing and I don't think that we teach that well enough to our students.

One of the things I am doing this year is teaching students how to pursue projects of passion. As they do this, they are going to also have to learn to look the part of their chosen passion. Whether it's nursing or beekeeping, dancing or teaching, these kids are learning that they need to really pay attention to how they look if they want to be taken seriously in the field they are discussing. It might not be the most important aspect of the project, but the book cover is never considered the most important part of a book either - and yet what do we use to judge whether we want to read a book or not? What are my students' audience members going to use to decide if they want to pay attention to the presentations? It's not the most important part maybe, but it's definitely more important than we think!

<3 Jackie