What Meghan Markle Can Teach us About Our Teaching Career

The marriage of Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has inspired royal fever on both sides of the pond. Americans are especially enamored of Markle, a commoner who appears to be shaking things up in the palace.

Meghan Markle is embarking on a new career, which will bring its own duties and expectations to the former Suits actress. In all good fun, we realized that her new career is not unlike our careers as educators. No, we won’t be donning diamonds anytime soon, but we do have many other things in common.

How is Meghan’s new career as a Royal like being a teacher?

Sometimes you have to follow protocol.

Royal life comes with many protocols. Rules of etiquette are taken seriously. Never approach the Queen or speak to her unless she approaches or speaks to you. There is an accepted and required uniform for many events- including dresses, stockings, hats and those crazy fascinators.

Royal protocol exists to make sure that people do not cause embarrassment or reflect poorly on the family. The Royal family is a brand, and with it comes responsibility to protect that brand. This is not unlike the role of teachers, who are role models in their communities.

While you won’t be expected to curtsy to the queen any time soon, you also have a set of protocols. You wouldn’t want to call the Superintendent “Dude” or address parents or community members with inappropriate slang. Teachers are expected to dress professionally and maintain a certain decorum. Just like in the royal family, there are clothing expectations. Tight miniskirts or tank tops and boxer shorts are frowned upon in school.

No one can really prepare you for the job.

Though there are lessons to prepare someone for a future as part of a royal family, the lessons can hardly prepare someone for the challenging roles they take on when they marry into royalty. Both Harry’s mother Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, who married Prince Andrew, struggled with the intensity of their duties and life under a microscope of public scrutiny.

While it may seem that being a Royal life means living a life of luxury, many royals balance many activities and charity work in an almost relentless schedule and must appear polished and smiling at all times.

Teachers can easily relate to relentless schedules. Teachers are expected to juggle many things, meet the demands of many students, and do it all with professionalism. Though most teachers have had an internship of sorts during student teaching, many find the reality of the job even more intense than they were prepared for.

You will be expected to carry out many non-negotiable duties.

Royals have jobs and duties just like the rest of us. They are expected to make appearances at many events, lead charitable organizations, and serve as diplomats in meetings with foreign dignitaries. Their schedules are often determined by others, with little room for personal choice.

Teachers can relate. They are often given schedules and due dates, such as those for testing or report cards, that are not negotiable. A personal illness causes a flurry of activity and special lesson planning in order to take a sick day. There are many daily duties, such as attendance, lunch count and bus duty that come with job. Despite your training, becoming a teacher, just like becoming a royal, often comes with a steep learning curve.

You don’t have to get it right the first time.

Meghan Markle has been welcomed into the royal family despite the fact that she is divorced. She had a previous career as an actress, a career which is unconventional in the British monarchy. She came from a Catholic background, which was a struggle for the Queen, who is the head of the Church of England.

She has made faux pas, such as wearing pants for public appearances with Prince Harry, or failing to remove the tailor’s tack from the back of her coat. Still, she has been accepted and loved all the more for her imperfections, which make her real and relatable.

As teachers, we all mess up. Someday you are going to accidentally wear mismatched socks or one blue shoe and one black shoe. Your students will laugh at you but love you anyway.

There will be bigger missteps too. A lesson will bomb. You will be called out by a parent or an administrator for something you have done. It is not the end of the world, and it is not career ending. You will rise above it.

Sometimes you have to find a new way to do things.

Meghan Markle is already changing a royal landscape that had existed with the same traditions for hundreds of years. She and Harry paved a new path by forgoing a typical lengthy courtship. They were engaged to be married within sixteen months of meeting, unlike the ten- year courtship of Prince William and Katherine Middleton.

Meghan is not an aristocrat. As an American from a blue-color family background, she brings a different sensibility to her new life. She is also the first mixed-race person to marry into the royal family. She brings a different cultural background with her as she enters her new life, and it is already evident that she will shape her role in new ways.

As a teacher, you also have a unique background, experience and set of skills. Your uniqueness is also an asset, and you can use it to try new things, bring fresh ideas to your school, and shape your classroom in a way that only you can do.

You have the ability to do good in the world.

Princess Diana was known as “The People’s Princess” and beloved for her work with AIDS patients and landmines. Meghan Markle appears to want to step into a similar role, announcing that “I’ve never wanted to be a lady who lunches; I’ve always wanted to be a woman who works.” Certainly, working towards humanitarian causes is in her future.

She also understands the power and responsibility of her future role. “With fame comes opportunity, but it also includes responsibility – to advocate and share, to focus less on glass slippers and more on pushing through glass ceilings. And, if I’m lucky enough, to inspire.”

Royals are not the only ones who have the opportunity and responsibility to do good in the world. Every day in every school, teachers are making a difference in the lives of their students. They teach, inspire, and lift students up through the relationships they build and the actions they take on behalf of students.

You may not be an American Princess. It is likely that no one addresses you as “Your Royal Highness.” Even though it sometimes doesn’t seem like it, as a teacher, you hold a place of respect in your community. The work you do is important and life changing. Teaching is one of the oldest and most revered professions in history.

Meghan Markle may change Britain, and maybe even influence the rest of the world. But you, too, have the power of change and influence, one student, one classroom, and once school at a time.

Our best,