Hot Weather Teaching Capsule Wardrobe Aug-Sept 2020

I jokingly told my husband the other day that you can tell when I'm excited about something when I start planning what I'm going to wear.  I'm excited about the opportunity to teach a couple high school math classes at a local Christian school this year.  Who knows if it will end up being in person or online, but I had fun planning my wardrobe nonetheless.  Tomorrow I will get the textbooks, so I can start planning the actual teaching part.

Hot weather makes it more difficult to keep things interesting, because you can't use layers as much.  The first thing I did was take out all the clothes I had put away when I was pregnant with my second.  I had left a lot of my clothes put away even after he was born, because I am still breastfeeding, so I've needed only the clothes that are nursing friendly.  Since I'll be teaching and I don't really nurse him much during the day anymore, I pulled out a lot of old dresses that I'm excited to wear again.  Some of the clothes are a *little* tight, since I've struggled with losing the baby weight, but I was surprised at how much I can wear again.

First, I started with my color palette: cream, brown, olive, teal, coral, floral, and leopard.  I bought some leopard print pointed toe flats this summer, and I'm excited to get to use them.  I made a list of all the clothes I have that are those colors and are dressy enough to teach in them.  I chose 3 silhouettes: dress, blouse/skirt, and blouse/pants.  Then I made a list of my dresses, blouses, and skirts/pants.

 1. white dress, 2. floral dress, 3. olive wrap dress, 4. olive t-shirt dress, 5. teal wrap dress

 1. cream blouse, 2. floral blouse, 3. coral blouse, 4. teal blouse

1. coral skirt, 2. olive jersey skirt, 3. olive dressy skirt, 4. brown jersey maxi skirt
5. brown corduroy midi skirt, 6. brown midi skirt, 7. brown cropped wide leg pants, 8. brown dress pants

Next I make a list of basic looks.  Each dress is obviously a look all on its own.  Then I listed each blouse with the bottoms that would look good with it, for a total of 19 distinct looks.  After that, I looked at the possible color combinations and what outfits I could make for each one from the clothes that I have.  I put an asterisk beside the ones I liked the best, then I started putting together the looks using the Stylebook app.

Here are the looks I came up with:

After that I started putting them on the calendar.  I will be teaching 3 days per week.  I'm not sure which days yet, so I just put the outfits on Mon/Wed/Fri for now.  I was careful not to wear the same pieces or color combinations in a row.

Here is my plan:

I'm pretty happy with my plan overall.  Some of the clothes I will need to see how practical they are, since I haven't worn them in a while.  I may also end up needing to add a sweater/scarf toward the end of September.

The best part of pre-planning my wardrobe is that it frees my mind up to focus on what's really important - teaching my students.  Also, it helps in the morning, which is always a crazy time with two little kids.

Tomorrow I will start lesson planning!  I can't believe I'm teaching again after such a long break.  I'm looking forward to it.