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| Christ Lutheran Church and School |
Here it is! The moment you've been waiting for! Three and a half years of college have finally lead up to this! Monday marks the start of student teaching, sixteen weeks in kindergarten at Christ Lutheran School. Sure I'm excited, the cooperating teacher is amazing, the kids are sweet, the parents are supportive. But there is a problem...
Pants.
I have no pants that fit the uniform for what teachers, and thereby student teachers, are allowed to wear. Now there are most definitely substantial perks for teaching in a parochial school, there's a sort of freeing from personal responsibility in the case of any fashion faux pas. For instance, I happen to own a red Christmas sweater which has reindeer faces on the front and reindeer butts on the back. Yes, the noses on the reindeer do light up. No the battery pack at the nape of my neck is not comfortable. But you see how a dress code saves me? Of course I would wear this sweater if I were teaching at a public school! It's fun, it's festive, it's hideous, the kids would love it! But I can't wear it in my private school, because reindeer behinds are a bit....um...sketchy. Fashion mistep avoided!
Parochial school dress code also saves me in the shoe department. One afternoon playground duty in open-toed shoes and I think maybe steel toed work boots might be more fitting attire.
But pants.
I understand why they say no jeans. There's certainly no place for this:
or this:
or um...this:
And while granted, none of my jeans fit these examples, I can understand that "appropriate jeans" is a loosely constructed term.
So I'm going on a khaki hunt today. I intend to emerge from Scottsdale Fashion Square with the makings of a J. Crew spokesperson, exuding preppy sophistication and...appropriateness.
