Teaching In a Coat and Tie

I teach in a coat and tie.  Never in my career have I been required to do so, nor am I making a fashion statement.  As far as that goes, my sartorial selections are quite traditional, e.g. navy jacket with tan or grey slacks, blue tie with grey jacket and navy slacks, and so forth.  My reason for how I dress to teach each day is rooted in one of the most fundamental aspects of my teaching philosophy, the importance of modeling.  If anyone is having visions of me as a runway model, please stop.  That is not what I mean.

I am speaking of what the historian Livy meant in the preface to his Ab Urbe Condita.  He begins his 142-book history of Rome from its founding to the death of Drusus in 9 A.D. by stating his desire that his readers pay close attention to quae vita, qui mores fuerint, the life and habits of life that once were.  Cicero had earlier said something similar in his speech Pro Archia, an ostensibly defense oration that was more of an encomium on learning.  He asks rhetorically, "Quam multas nobis imagines--non solum ad intuendum, verum etiam ad imitandum--fortissimorum virorum expressas scriptores et Graeci et Latini reliquerunt?"  "How many images have both Greek and Latin authors left us, not only for gazing at, but also for imitating?"  (Pro Archia, 14)

What do an ancient Roman historian and statesman-cum-philosopher have to do with how I dress to teach high school students?  They both speak to the importance of models of behavior.  I dress as I do because that is how my dad dressed.  He had been an elementary teacher before I was born, but as I grew up I knew him as an elementary school principal.

Norman Perkins, Principal of Galena Elementary School, 1968-1991l

This picture, which was converted into a painting and hung in his school when he retired, represents the image of my dad that I saw every day when he came home from work.  It was a professional look, one that conveyed respect for his job as an educator and the people with whom he worked.  When I began teaching at a middle school in Kansas City, his was the model for my own apparel.  In fact, it was not until years later that I realized why I had made the dress decisions that I had.  At the time it was simply the natural thing to do.

Surely, you must be thinking, this cannot be the point of this blog post.  There must be a more significant purpose to this, and indeed there is.  Cicero and Livy were right.  Imitation is far more than a form of flattery, sincere or otherwise.  It is a foundational principle of learning, and this is part of why Cato the Elder's definition of an orator, quoted by Quintillian in Institutio Oratoria 12.1.1, was "Vir bonus dicendi peritus."  For both Cato and Quintillian, the ideal orator was not merely a person skilled in speaking, but a good person skilled in speaking.  It was not enough to learn phrasing and breath control and all manner of rhetorical devices.  These cannot exist in a vacuum but must be used by particular human beings, and what kind of people they are matters as much as the abilities they express.  The Stoic philosopher Seneca gave voice to this in his Epistle 88 when he suggested that rather than spending a great deal of time to earn the title o hominem litteratum, o well read man, "Simus hoc titulo rusticiore contenti:  O virum bonum!"  "Let us," he argues, "be content with a more rustic title:  O good man!"

Perhaps this is the reason that imitation of the true, the good, and the beautiful is rarely discussed in schools of education or in professional development conferences.  We have always, even in Seneca's time, distanced ourselves from that which smacked of the rustic because of an urban prejudice that values the supposed sophistication of the city over anything else.  It is helpful, as with any prejudice, to forego judgment until one has examined all sides fully, and once this is done regarding imitation of the good person, it will become clear why this should be a foundational educational principle and not merely a quaint rustic notion best forgotten.

Simply put, we do not like hypocrites.  We are unlikely to take seriously the advice to quit cigarettes if it is given by our chain-smoking doctor.  Once again, it is Seneca who speaks to this in Epistle 52 and summarizes the idea by admonishing his readers, "Eum elige adiutorem quem magis admireris cum videris quam cum audieris."  "Choose a guide whom you admire more when you see him than when you listen to him."

As a teacher I am called to a certain nobility of character.  Since I am a Latin teacher, that character should reflect the nobility and beauty of thought and creation expressed by the best of the ancient Greeks and Romans.  Teaching involves incarnation.  It is not enough that I dictate facts that students could just as easily and possibly better glean from a text or online source.  I must embody what I teach, for it is the witness of my life that will produce the most memorable lesson.  For a fuller discussion of this, read George Steiner's Lessons of the Masters, one of the finest books on what truly transpires between teachers and students.

Yet I am not a teacher first but rather a follower of Jesus Christ.  As a Christian I am called to follow my Father's example in far more significant ways than I did in patterning my professional dress after that of my earthly father.  This, of course, would be impossible if God were merely an abstract deity, an idea, a notion developed in the collective human mind over centuries.  Our Father is real and in the most basic, etymological sense of that word.  Those questioning this with the challenge that they have never seen Him join the ranks of Philip, the disciple of Jesus, and Christ's response to him applies today.

Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."  Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip?  Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  Hw can you say, "Show us the Father?"  (John 14:8-9, ESV)

I hope, at the end of the day, I have done more than just dress as Norman Perkins once did as the principal of an elementary school in southern Indiana.  My goal as a Christian teacher is to model, however imperfectly, my life on that of my Father in heaven, and this each of us can do by looking to the fullest representation of Him the world has seen, Jesus Christ.

The Way of An Educator

L-R:  My mom, Patricia; our daughter; my wife, Melissa; and our son

They named a road for my dad.  This is not the kind of thing to happen every day or for every person, so our family was pretty excited about it.  The road, Norman R. Perkins Way, is in Floyd County in southern Indiana.  It could, of course, have been Norman R. Perkins Street/Avenue/Road...you name it.  I am glad they chose "way," however, for it made me think.  Just what was my dad's way, his particular way of doing things?

He was born in 1930 and grew up in Jeffersonville, Indiana, which is on the Ohio River in Clark County.  After serving in the Army in Korea, he used the G.I. Bill to earn his undergraduate degree in education from Indiana University.  From there he went to the University of Michigan for his Master's in education.  After teaching sixth grade there, he moved back home and spent the remaining thirty-three years of his career in the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation.  Nine of those years were as a sixth grade teacher at Mt. Tabor Elementary, and twenty-four were as the principal of Galena Elementary.

When he passed away in 2009, I listened to stories from an unending stream of people at the funeral home.  The details may have differed, but they all told the same basic tale, one I had heard from countless colleagues and students of his over the years.  Without a doubt, his work as an educator influenced many people, including me.  Here are some of his ways.

Dress professionally  My dad did wear Bermuda shorts to mow the grass, but for the five working days of the week and on Sundays for church, my dad wore a coat and tie.  When I began my teaching career, I simply never gave any thought to dressing in any other way.  It is a practice I advocate as we talk increasingly about the professionalization of education.

Have fun with students  He drew smiley faces with ketchup on the hamburgers of his students at lunch time.  He added syllables to their names to make them long and funny, drawing laughs and smiles.  To this day I do the same, at least with names.  A student named Miles became Kilometers.  Whenever I have a student whose name is in a song, that song gets sung.  It is no surprise that when he retired, the students at Galena Elementary drew pictures of Mr. Perkins with one consistent feature...a huge smile.

Work as if nothing is beneath you  It was nothing for my dad to stay late after school-wide functions to make sure everything was cleaned up.  When he had a student whose wheelchair made it difficult for her to disembark from the bus in the morning or board it in the afternoon, he was there to carry her.  He spent the lunch period in the cafeteria when many other principals swore they would never set foot in such a place.  It makes me think of the perhaps apocryphal story of Abraham Lincoln.  An aide saw him blacking his boots and admonished him, "Sir, Presidents do not black their own boots."  Without missing a beat, Lincoln replied, "Then whose boots do they black?"

Pay what you owe  My dad was responsible for making out the deposits for the milk money and the lunch money each week.  His accounts always balanced to the penny.  When other principals talked of rounding things off, my dad would have none of it.  Our family once went out to eat at Pizza Hut.  As we prepared to leave, my mom went to the restroom, and instead of paying, my dad and I began talking.  We walked out without paying and without realizing it.  Later that night, it hit my dad what had happened, and he made it a point to go back to that restaurant the next evening to pay our bill.

Support those around you  Galena Elementary was one of the first in the district to make computers a regular part of instruction.  This was in the late '70s and early '80s when the Apple II and the Apple IIe were the hot products.

Computers were not exactly his thing, but my dad recognized their value and, more importantly, the passion and the ability of his teachers for whom computers were the thing.  As one of them told me recently, he supported them in their efforts to bring this technology into the school and encouraged them to help make Galena a cutting-edge school for its time.

I said that his work influenced many educators, and another of those was present the night the Floyd County commissioners passed their resolution on Norman R. Perkins Way.  She is Donna Atwood, my dad's niece, and my cousin.  Donna has done just about everything there is in the field of education, including drive a bus.  She is currently the special needs coordinator at Pleasant Ridge Elementary School, also in southern Indiana.  That evening she told our children a bit of her story and what inspired her to become an educator.  Not surprisingly, it had to do with an early childhood memory of visiting her Uncle Norman's school.  I am sure my dad would say he had nothing to do with her becoming a teacher, but then again, that was just his way.

With my cousin, Donna Atwood