For years, teachers around the nation, including at South Eastern School District, questioned whether or not to cover their tattoos and take out their piercings. Why is this?
Piercings and tattoos have a stigma against them and often clash with the view of professionalism, even though both are a known form of self-expression. Heather A. Cavise from Walden University writes that “limiting self-expression in the workplace can result in a lack of engagement, which reduces employee productivity.”
Do we really want teachers to not express themselves and become a mundane source of education every single day?
When asked if piercings and tattoos were unprofessional in the workplace, Jenna Ritter, a former Kennard-Dale English teacher possessing both said, “No, I do not. I generally think they are a form of self-expression.”
Ritter follows this with an explanation that there is a line between unprofessional and professional piercings and tattoos, saying, “I could understand that if anything was offensive or inappropriate or extremely distracting, but otherwise I think there is no problem.”
On a different note, when Kyle Hardenbrook, a Kennard-Dale science teacher possessing neither tattoos nor piercings, was asked if piercings and tattoos were unprofessional in the workplace, he said, “Yes.”
Hardenbrook follows this with a detailed explanation as to why he feels this way. He said, “There is stigma, whether earned or not, around piercings and tattoos, even though that has changed slightly over the years.”
He further elaborated: “I’m not saying that all piercings and all tattoos are unprofessional… If you were to come in and interview for a teaching job and your eyelids are pierced and you’ve got chains hanging off your face, you did that for a reason. You’re desiring to draw attention to yourself, and these are not good traits for people that you want to work with.”
As expressing yourself can draw attention from others, is attention necessarily a bad trait in the workplace? There’s a difference between good attention and bad attention. Good attention is people valuing or seeking out your self-expression, and bad attention is when they seek out for negative and nit-picky reasons. As one can tell by the two different teacher perspectives on this issue, what kind of attention given is depending on the individual.
Overall, no matter the stance on the professionalism of tattoos and piercings, both teachers said they don’t view their coworkers with them any differently or less professionally. Respect in their profession is given for the human being behind the piercings and tattoos, who they know and value as a teacher.