Educators act ethically and maintain the integrity, credibility and reputation of the profession

Professional Standards for BC Educators

Standard 2 is the “act professional” standard. This standard might be the hardest to describe for me, because maintaining it does not always mean there is a material to show for it. Standard 2 is about the way we conduct ourselves in and out of the classroom. It’s often about the conversations we have or the way we carry ourselves from description of others.

During my first two practicums (and before, when I was a TTUC), I found that students would sometimes say things to me I wasn’t supposed to know or would fish for answers I could not give them. I had a situation during my first practicum where my coaching teacher was away and I had to tell the students about an event happening the next day. I told the students that they would need to bring outside winter gear for it. Most of the kids were fine and understood that we could only tell them the day before because it had been so cold in the days before no one was sure if the event would happen or not. One student walked to me, though, and told me that when I’m a teacher I should always give more time to prepare for something and that she was incredibly upset I did not tell them earlier even though her classroom teacher did not want me to. I was a bit shocked. I reminded her we had in-days the last 3 previous days and only today did we get confirmation it was happening and that while I appreciated the input, I would not go behind her teacher’s back to tell the class something as I was not the classroom teacher.

An image of a winding road surrounded by orange and brown coloured trees. There are 5 cars at different points on the road. This image is from eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.

It was a hard boundary for me, one I hadn’t had to set yet. It was something I didn’t expect to have to set, but afterwards there were more times I needed to set the boundary that somethings are not for my ears as a student teacher. I enjoyed students telling me things like “when I was Ms. X’s class she did this cool thing…” or “I’m excited for next year because I think I’ll be in Mr. Y’s class and my brother said he makes Math really fun.” I got to hear what students liked about school from these instances. And I enjoyed feedback from students on activities we did, whether “this was confusing,” or “this was really fun.” My problem became that students were talking badly about the way other teachers ran their classes and I felt unprofessional listening. Other teachers are/will be my co-workers. I want students to be able to tell me if something happened that felt unsafe to them or if they got frustrated, but I found when something like “this teacher’s gym games suck,” I had to stop them because that is not for my ears.

I’ve begun practicing explaining the difference in the way I’m okay hearing about other teachers from students. I’ve also benefitted from incredible Coaching Teachers who demonstrated their implementation of this boundary with students and that I could then practice saying the same things they did when these instances happened.

Standard 3