In the 9th and 12th grades I had a Social Studies teacher, Mr. D'Angelo, who liked to make cartoons. His overhead slides were covered with cartoons and when he had us do group presentations on topics in the textbook, he encouraged us to draw our own cartoons. I was always quite good at drawing (for the little pond that was my High School-- by Art School standards I'm mediocre) and I didn't mind being the one in my group to do the cartoons. When we presented a Sociology report on the structure of a family-based TV show (my group did Smallville), our slides were covered with colorful art.I'm sure that seeing a cartoon of Henry VIII didn't give me any better visual picture of the man than the classical art in the text. I'm sure that drawing a shirtless Tom Welling with an S painted on his chest didn't make me understand cultural representations of family dynamics any better. What I did get was a connection with my teacher. He nerded out, he showed us his focused passion, and by sharing one thing that made him an individual, we came to respect him as a human being.
There is a lot of theory about dress codes in schools and the act of dividing students from teachers. It is important, to create a visual of authority, that teachers don't show up to school in ripped jeans and a Star Wars t-shirt. That said, it is also important that students don't think of their teachers as robots in gray suits.
My 6th grade math teacher wore a different pin every day and encouraged us to call her out when she repeated one. My 11th grade English teacher, Miss Long, had Star Wars toys on her desk and told us amazing stories about her bunny and the time she flushed living, breeding snails into her apartment's septic system and consequently had to move. I love all of these teachers. While I understand that correlation does not equal causation, and that my love for my 11th grade English class was not caused by an action figure of Hayden Christensen, I also understand on a greater level that these little things were exactly why I liked those classes.
Even my History teacher who was sarcastic and made good-natured fun of people (and sometimes not so good-natured) was one of my favorite teachers because I knew that she was a real person. Even if I didn't share those interests with my teachers, I knew that they were a real person who cared about my education, and not just a robot who handed out homework to get a paycheck.
 |
| We'll leave Robot Teachers to Japan. |
You have to draw the line of professionalism somewhere, but make sure that you don't put that line in the way of your personality. Letting your interests, no matter how nerdy they are, sneak into your teaching, will assure that your students-- be they nerd, jock, or drama geek-- will understand that you are a human being and that the things you are teaching may just have some value in the real world.
