Most schools have a student dress code because they want students to have a positive learning environment. However, the dress code isn’t just for students, teachers also have their own dress codes expectations.  

“I think professional dress code needs to be a higher standard than what we hold the students. I think what we hold for students dress code is a minimum,” assistant principal Cindi Osborne said. “There is a dress code for teachers. They have it in the teacher’s handbook and it goes through what their dress code is for them”

For many students, it usually doesn’t matter what a teacher is wearing.

“The teacher’s clothing doesn’t affect me at all because it’s never distracting unlike us,” freshman Austin Widner said. “The teacher’s dress code isn’t any different from the student’s dress code. We all have to dress formally, but students don’t really have to dress formally like teachers do, but I feel like dress code is very important because people don’t want any wrong messages, but at the same time it is not like it shouldn’t be a huge thing.”

Although most students don’t care what a teacher wears, some do think how a teacher dresses makes a difference in the classroom.

“If teachers dress what the students dresses like in school, it would be so distracting because they’re all grown up and mature and it’s weird seeing them wearing our kinds of clothes,” freshman Diya Deepak said. “For example, if we were doing a warm up in class and my teacher was wearing some colorful, childish clothes, I probably wouldn’t take my eyes off of her or him and I would probably get called out for not paying attention because I was so distracted by something uncommon.”

With a goal of student learning in mind, teachers understand what their dress code is and how it affect the students.

“I think the ideal attire is to dress professionally, but I also think it’s important because society is changing a lot so I think that there is a casual opportunity especially in education,” world geography teacher Martha Richard said. “I understand the dress code for teachers because I think there is a definite need to make sure to have certain rules and the presentation for kids to pay attention to you.”