Spirit Week. For students this is like the most exciting week of the year! Hat day, crazy sweater day, dress like your favorite teacher day. Nothing spices up a hall quite like students wearing neon jumpsuits or outlandish wigs to resemble celebrities. I’m here to let the world know that spirit day wasn’t created for the kids. Oh no. It is actually every educator’s perfect excuse to wear pants that don’t have a button for five consecutive days. Think it’s impossible? Let me explain how I did it. Friends, put away your iron. Your dress slacks can stay on hangers for the next week. Welcome to spirit week!
Monday: Pajama Day
Please. This wasn’t even challenging! What pair of pajama pants actually has a button? This is what is referred to as the “roll on out the bed” day. You literally roll out of your bed and arrive to work. Messy hair? Don’t care! It’s socially appropriate to come to school with rat tails and a hair style that looks as if you have been electrocuted. In fact, it’s encouraged! Bust out those flannel pants and your oversized hoodie from college, it’s PJ Day!
Tuesday: Twin Day
When you teach on a team of teachers and one of them is pregnant, twin day excitement goes to a whole new level. The ELA teacher on my team is days from having her first child. Let’s take a second to embrace how awesome that is! Let’s be honest, at that point in a pregnancy the poor mom’s belly looks like it is going to burst. We decided to have some fun with it and wear a basketball under a sweatshirt so we could all be twins together! Pregnancy pants are obviously sweatpants. So in this case, we only wore the sweats to be ridiculously supportive of our teammate. It’s just what good friends do for each other…
Wednesday: Super Hero Day
Have you ever seen a super hero fight crime in jeans or dress pants? Ya… me either. Clearly part of the super-hero uniform is spandex. So running tights it is! With my glow in the dark Ghostbusters t-shirt on and a pair of black jogging leggings I was out the door ready to fight crime AND had nailed 3 consecutive days of comfy. Yes!
Thursday: Throwback Day
The possibilities on this day are simply endless. SO many fun things you can do with the 80’s. A tweed blazer with HUGE shoulder pads and acid washed jeans was a front runner option for me. I also thought about going as Jayne Fonda and doing a very nice jazzercise style with leg warmers and a really stylish headband with teased bangs. But, I opted for something a little different this year. I went for the year 1998. This is the year I was a 7th grader and as a 7th grade science teacher in the actual building I attended as a teenager, it seemed like the perfect choice. I totally found my shooting shirt from my days as an adolescent baller. In this era a warm-up was a heavy mesh with my last name screen printed on the back. Um. Awesome! If only I could have found my blue tear-away pants. You know, the kind the button up the side and you can literally tear them away for when it is your time to shine in the big game! I guess that would technically be pants WITH buttons, but it so would have been worth it. But since those weren’t an option I went with the classic royal blue swishy pant. Nothing says late 90’s and middle school like a pant that sounds like a car wash. And of course, they have no buttons! Boom!
Friday: School Spirit Day
The final day of the 5-part comfortable extravaganza. School spirit basically means wear school colors and logos, right? That means all I had to do was wear yellow, blue, and a wildcat. Accomplishing this week long mission was just too easy. I pulled out some royal blue Adidas sweats and a halfzip and I was out the door.
That, my friends, is how you do a week long stint in pants with no button. My motivation to arrive to school each day increased exponentially as I was not only comfy, I was sporting styles that made me an involved teacher having fun with the kids. You can do it too! Embrace it, and just be ready to need to go on a diet next week. Turns out, when you wear pants without attachments for 5 days you don’t realize those extra snacks are making a difference. Elastic just goes with the flow, buttons don’t….