E3 – Exemplify an understanding of professional responsibilities and policies.
This program standard emphasizes the necessity a teacher must exhibit in regard to the professional responsibilities and policies required of the role [1].
One example of the E3 standard in EDU 6134, Professional Issues and Conduct, was the document of teacher examples demonstrating how school districts can interpret moral behavior with regard to technology. The page, entitled Why are Teachers Getting into Trouble?, highlighted various news stories about teacher/technology cases from around the nation. Each case featured a teacher who used technology in a manner that his or her districted deemed inappropriate and not becoming of a teacher. All teachers were fired for the behaviors, which ranged from impolite references to students and/or district expectations to crude language to risqué photos or behavior. In most cases, the information was considered part of the teacher’s private profile online; however, it was still deemed as a failure to engage in professional conduct and thus the teachers lost their teaching positions. This document ultimately served to synthesize the professional requirement of moral conduct with regard to technology. As technology advances, what constitutes professional conduct online can become murky, particularly when one believes that the information is private [2]. Figure 1 displays the document in question.
This evidence serves as highlight my emerging understanding of the potential complications for my professional responsibilities, particularly in regards to moral conduct and technology. While one might assume that moral conduct would be viewed similarly from district to district, the reality is that this can often to more subjective than one would like. This also informs my understanding of how I, due to my professional responsibilities, will need to regard my use of technology in both my public and private life. In addition, the document also provides me with concrete examples of the misconduct of other teachers with regard to technology. It is an important reminder to operate with caution when considering my behavior or technology use—private or public [3].
This document summarizes a variety of cases involving teachers, moral conduct, and technology.
After reading these cases, I feel like I have a stronger understanding of how complicated the nature of moral conduct, with particular emphasis on it and technology, can be. Each case featured a teacher who did not believe that he or she was behaving in a manner that violated district policy. In some of these cases, I felt conflicted about whether or not it was appropriate for them to be fired. My belief is that most of the teachers believed that, as the comments or pictures were not public, that he or she would not be in danger of moral misconduct. But reading these cases proves that this is actually not the case—moral misconduct is up to district interpretation and thus requires caution [4].
The implications for student learning exist on two levels. First of all, students lose teachers who may have been effective educators with whom they built significant rapport. Student learning is also interrupted as substitute teachers or other teachers step in while another teacher is being hired. Many of the norms and expectations of that teacher’s class may experience disruptions as well. In Special Education classrooms, a firing (particularly an abrupt one) could cause a substantial amount of disruption for student learning, as some of these students rely on environmental homeostasis as much as possible [5]. The implications for student learning for myself having learned this information, however, is that I am now a better informed teacher who can avoid these complications by conducting myself with professionalism in a wide variety of settings, including those outside the classroom.
In this particular area, one specific step I can take to improve my effectiveness is to recheck the privacy settings on any of my social media accounts to ensure no students can access the information. An additional step would be to examine the history of these accounts to safeguard that none of my posts could be considered (however mild in my estimation) a violation of professional conduct. While this might seem somewhat “overkill,” the artifact provided in this reflection serves as a reminder that extra caution is better than less [6].
My bPortfolio 