Community High School Science teacher Courtney Kiley often gets mistaken for a student. For this reason Kiley decided that one of her professional goals was to bring class back to the classroom. “I got pretty casually dressed last year when I was pregnant…wearing sweats and stuff to school, so I really tried to make an effort this year to put the class back in the classroom and dress up a little more,” Kiley said.However, her view of the word “classy” is not the same as most people view of it. “I am talking about not wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts every day, and that would basically be it. I also think wearing black is classy…I wore a pretty fancy sweatshirt the other day. Most people would look at it and say it’s just a sweatshirt, but it had some embellishments on it that made it classy,” she said.

Kiley says she started out strong. On the morning of the first day of school, she was wearing nice pants and a blouse, until her five month old threw up all over her. “So I dressed up in something that I still thought was pretty classy, like a nice little sweater and some nicer jeans, but my hall mates –who set the bar pretty high for fashion — Liz and Tracy, immediately made fun of me [on] the first day for not being dressed up….I was pretty discouraged actually, because I thought I was doing a good job. They don’t seem to recognize when I make efforts,” she says. Starting to slip back into the routine of wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts, Kiley is thinking about easing into this goal by starting with Classy Wednesdays –every Wednesday, many Community students will sport their finest clothing.

Kiley admits that bringing class back to the classroom, “…was a long term goal. I really set out to dress up every single day… I mean I admit I’m the worst one dressed in the science department and Tod [Tharp] wears Crocs to school, so that says something about what I dress like… I set out to be a long term thing, but then I quickly realized that in order to be classy I have to buy the clothes and I hate shopping.The classy Wednesday thing is a good thing to shoot for.” The Communicator has decided to help Kiley out.

Throughout the year we will be posting pictures of Kiley’s clothing.