As Matthew bathes, I am sitting here contemplating what exactly professionalism is. Is it wearing make-up? Dressing nicer than we would normally? Is it a behavior? A way of speech? A type of education?
I am in school to get my bachelor's in the Science of Elementary Education at Faulkner University. (Yes, yes, I am due to get my BS at FU in 2013 after the world is supposed to end, now that we've all had a good laugh can we get back to professionalism?)
The longer I am in school and the more classes focused on my major I take, the more I hear about how we are supposed to be professionals and look the part. This brings me to the question, what exactly
is professionalism?
Even Webster's is vague, it say that professionalism is the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a professional person. So let's break it down.
Conduct is behavior. We are graded on it from the time we start school all the way through adulthood and it is even monitored in the nursing homes and assisted living communities. So no pressure or anything. Professional conduct, I would think, would be conduct that reflects well, not only on you, but also on your chosen profession. As a construction worker, I would imagine that your "professional conduct" would have a lot to do with the way you handle tools, heavy machinery, and the way you handle safety precautions. As a soon-to-be teacher, I would imagine that professional conduct would run the gamut from appropriate interaction with administrators to appropriate interaction with parents to the interaction with the children, all of which would be different kinds of interaction. Running from patience, to deference, to being firm but gentle, to calm, to calming... Whew, can you imagine all the different ways one must conduct one's self to be considered a professional teacher?
Aims. What are aims? I would define aims, in this context, to be akin to goals. What goals might each profession have? Well, I would imagine the goals of a "professional" teacher to range from having a
good working relationship with ones coworkers and administrators, to having a good open relationship with the parents, to getting the students taught what they need to know throughout the year as well as loving the students, I could go on.
Qualities. Let's see. What qualities would be considered professional? Qualities is rather a vague term. This could mean anything! Is a quality something related to character? Is it something related to the way one speaks? Is it related to the way one presents one's self? Or what about the way one dresses or is made up using make up? I would argue that qualities is an all encompassing word that is used to describe all of these "qualities".
How does one dress professionally? Well, this would be considered a subjective thing. Each profession has it's own dress code. On a job site, construction workers dress professionally in a hard hat and clothes that can get dirty. A worker on the road would have to wear a bright reflective vest. Police officers and firefighters have uniforms. Teachers must have some kind of dress code. Yes, there is a dress code for teachers and it involves slacks and or skirts or dresses for ladies as well as a "nice" top. For gentleman teachers, this would include nice slacks as well as a "dress shirt" and maybe even a tie.
So, to sum up, professionalism is not just dressing nice or wearing make up. It is knowing how to behave appropriately with a wide variety of people as well as setting or having goals set for you that must be met in order to further the profession in question. All of this is what is expected of professionals, I can do it, can you?
And now for the daily picture with haiku...
Two boys having fun
This is what the break is for
School starts tomorrow
Have a great one everyone!
