Teachers’ failure to adhere to dress code a travesty – GTU General Secretary

Mar 18, 2014 News

Teachers are not only the educators of the nation’s children but they are expected to set a crucial moral example as well. Moreover, the physical appearance of teachers cannot be understated.
This notion was particularly amplified recently by General Secretary of the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU), Coretta McDonald, who disclosed that it is for this reason that teachers are encouraged to adhere to the Code of Conduct set out by both the GTU and the Ministry of Education which, among other things, speaks to teachers’ dress code.

GTU General Secretary, Coretta McDonald

“When we talk about dress code we talk about teachers being properly covered and that is in general (both male and female teachers)…When we look around at our professionals in different working environment we realise that dress code is something that we really have to maintain and your dress speaks a lot about you as an individual,” said McDonald during an interview with this publication.
The General Secretary is adamant that if teachers are not properly dressed to face their respective classes the outcome could see them sending confusing messages to the students they are required to interface with.
She speculated that students could in fact start thinking differently about their teachers. “By dressing in a manner that is not professional you are saying to the children that it is all right to dress anyhow, anywhere; but because we don’t want teachers to dress anyhow there is a dress code in place,” asserted McDonald.
She said that the dress code set out for teachers, details what kind of clothing are appropriate for teachers to wear to school. Understandably, more focus is directed to female teachers’ attire.
“It speaks about sleeves and cuts in front of your dresses and your blouses; your length of skirt and it even goes as far as speaking about the footwear to attend school. As long as teachers are familiar with the dress code this should not be a problem,” insisted the General Secretary.
However, she noted that “like everything else every now and again teachers would slip and slide and they attempt to wear certain things to come into the schools, especially those female teachers who would wear trousers to go to school.”
“We often have to let them know how the trousers are supposed to be sewn and especially for those teachers who are bulky, you would not want them to be wearing very tight trousers to attend school,” asserted McDonald.
And for teachers wearing skirts there are occasions that they too must be reminded of the types they are permitted to wear to school. “Reminding them is essential to ensure that they don’t wear thin or short skirts which would show all sorts of things that we don’t want to see,” noted McDonald.
She said that while there are not too many teachers who fail to adhere to the code of conduct, the detouring few are already too many.
President of the Union, Colin Bynoe, who has also reiterated the convictions of his General Secretary, said that teachers must see themselves as role models for students whereby they endeavour not only to dress appropriately but also seek to be punctual and adhere to other rules and regulations.
“Teachers are supposed to be prepared to teach but some of them are going against what is expected of them…some are not writing notes for lessons instead some teachers by the way they dress alone are a distraction to their students,” he observed.
But such a state of affairs should never obtain in the school system since according to Bynoe, teachers should have been taught, at the level of the teachers’ training college, the ideal manner of conduct.
He questioned whether such practices are in fact linked to the quality of teaching or to the quality of people that are allowed to enter the system. Bynoe has therefore called for a study into quality of teachers being trained in order to effectively plot the way forward.