You can spot a teacher anywhere

It was a $50 haircut for Pete’s sake. No one but lawyers or business executives would ever pay $50 for a haircut, but somehow my friend convinced me it was worth it.

“He’ll trim your hair for free between cuts. It all works out,” she said.

That is why I found myself waiting for a $50 haircut one afternoon on K Street in Anchorage. I asked the hairdresser, with whom I obviously had nothing in common except my checkbook, what he thought I did for a living. He replied all too quickly. I had to be a school teacher. He said I looked the part.

Fifty dollars for a pageboy undercut and I look the part of a school marm? Excuse me, but I was thinking maybe district attorney.

What gave me away so readily in this elite boutique? Perhaps the fact that my hairstyle obviously hadn’t changed since 1983. Maybe it was my green cardigan from Sears. Still, I wondered, what exactly set apart a teacher from other professionals so that a hairdresser can spot one at 50 yards? Ten years later and the same basic hair style — the answer eludes me. What makes a teacher look like a teacher?

I know many fine teachers who began teaching as a second profession, but the majority of teachers chose education as their first choice. A large percentage of teachers go on to pursue master’s degrees in education, making them one of the most educated professional fields in terms of depth rather than stardom. Teachers represent the Average Joe economically and in broad experiences. Most elementary teachers are women. More male teachers appear as the grading shifts further from whole child assessments to Carnegie units; however, none of these statistics paint identifying marks for a hairdresser.

After 10 years of observation I hypothesize that the single most distinguishing characteristic of teachers are not their hairstyles or fashion, but instead their friends. Teaching is a team sport. Nothing short of the military does the bonding of professionals seem as tight to me as in the field of education, right down to the sharing of war stories.

Some stories are more poignant than others — stories of children with labyrinth-style burns on their bellies from where a parent held them to an electric range. Others are comic relief tales such as the day I thought I had captivated my fifth hour filled with eighth-graders with the saga of the Civil War only to discover that the buttons on my favorite blue shirt had freed themselves, along with the rest of me, in front of the class.

Teaching blends terrifying isolation with an equally terrifying sense of community. Behind the classroom doors the teacher belongs to no one. At the same time they belong to everyone — kids, school, parents and even the older gentleman ahead of them in line at Fred Myer. All eyes turn away, only to use binoculars when the teachers aren’t looking. However alone teachers my feel, each school, each class, each student’s memory attaches itself to a colleague down the hall who helped along the way.

If I have enjoyed any success in my years of service it has been more because of the tremendous support I have found in my school than because of any particular lesson or talent. Next to the copier outside the door when the busses arrive by the monkey bars during recess, or in the lounge while wolfing down last night’s salad and a Diet Coke, deep and loyal friendships form.

New Year’s Day comes not on the first day of January for teachers, but the first day of school when 16,000 Mat-Su Borough School District students race in with hopes for a good year for learning. It’s nice to know that I am not alone as I face the daunting task of teaching kids to read and to write and to think. We can’t do it alone. I know that all of us are smarter than any of us.

I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me before. It is so obvious. I know why the hairdresser of long ago recognized my career. It wasn’t me at all. I didn’t look like the school marm. By golly, it was my friend.