Commitment to students and student learning is the central guiding force for us as teachers. Our ethical standards incorporate care, respect, trust and integrity.
Care:To me this means being empathetic, trying to place myself in the students' shoes; trying to understand where they are coming from. Students come from different backgrounds and have different strengths. When the strengths of others match our own it's easy to be encouraging and caring. We need to find ways to recognise the value of strengths that don't match our own. We need to find ways to see the good qualities in all our students and nurture the development of those qualities.
Respect: To me this means realising that everyone's opinion matters and everyone should have a chance to voice their views. It means really listening to each student. It also means self-reflection to discover whether my expectations are giving everyone a fair chance. It means observing whether what I am doing is working and adjusting my practice to enable the learning of each particular group of students.
Trust: To me trust means believing that students will do the best they possibly can if they are given the freedom to develop their own learning within safe constraints appropriate to their age and level of development.
Integrity: To me integrity means taking care of the trust that has been placed in me; being discrete,only sharing information about students when that sharing is professionally called for; always portraying students in the best possible light.
To me there are no bad kids only kids that I have failed to understand. No-one is perfect; our ethical standards are our vision and guide. I often make mistakes and fail to live up to my vision. The important thing to me is to remain open enough to see my mistakes and flexible enough to make the changes needed to correct them.
Please add your comments, stories, memories of teachers who were there for you as a student.
The link below is to the Ontario College of Teachers flyer on ethical standards and standards of practice.
ethical standards and standards of practice
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2 comments:
I really identified with everything written in this blog. Too often you find teachers that don't really care about their students. They do not allow for their voices to be heard. To me an effective teacher is one that believes in you as a student. They do everything possible to find your strengths and teach you to value these. They make use of different teaching styles and treat all students fairly. A true teacher is one that wants to learn with their students and make this process fun. Care, respect, trust, and integrity are all things that I hope that I will possess when I begin to teach.
Thanks for the comment Lyndsey!
Carol
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