A professional code of ethics outlines my primary responsibility as a teacher, to define my role in a student's life. I whole-heartedly demonstrate respect, integrity, responsibility and ethical behaviour in the classroom, whether virtual or in-person and most importantly, conduct with parents and co workers. These core values underpin teaching and guide myself as a teacher to make decision efficiently about professional issues. I find it my responsibility to inspire, promote and enhance public confidence for students. I have taken part in the Code of Ethics professional development training online to deepen my knowledge and understanding around this factor. This training clearly articulates the behaviours that are expected of all employees and outlines the public sector values alongside the professional conduct standards. I have acknowledged and understood the Code of Ethics and have familiarised myself with the content and conduct in a manner where consistency is evident with the values and standards of professional conduct set out in the Code.
Evidence:
Since becoming a teacher, I have gathered a deep understanding around duty of care. Understanding the implications of and comply with relevant legislative, administrative, organisational and professional requirements, policies and processes is a thoroughly important part of my role. One student in my class is regularly away from school due to his personal background and family reasons. Not only is he behind in his learning, there area also concerns of family neglect. As part of my role, collaboratively with my leadership team we have decided on a step by step structure for when he is away, comes to school with no food or shows obvious signs. It has been important to stay on top of this and document all that happens, in the respect of the child's mental and physical wellbeing.
As part of this process, we often document down when certain signs occurs, particularly having no food, coming into school distressed or not coming to school at all. Further, when any of these signs occur we often get in touch with this students emergency contact to ensure there is explained absences. As he is also a low levelled learner, it is crucial to support his participation in class and consistently motivate him to ensure he feels safe, secure and part of the classroom community.
Evidence:
Engaging parents in the classroom community helps extend teaching outside the classroom, creates a more positive experience for the students and supports students performance in school. It is essential for parents to be included in the classroom community to support the learning that happens at home as well. I believe it is important to ensure parents and caregivers are continuously being updated on what is happening in their child's education. As a teacher, it is my aim to build strong working relationships with parents from day one. I always show care towards involving parents and caregivers into the classroom community and providing opportunities for parents to be part of particular events. Further, maintaining strong working relationships with parents allows them to interact with their child more as they have a better understanding of the curriculum and overall, feel included in the community.
In my present role, I have created a classroom website that can be accessed by parents. My website includes, term overviews, weekly homework activities, daily timetables and formative and summative tasks. This allows communication and feedback between families, students and teachers daily as well as making learning clear and visible. It provides a clear, sequenced and transparent curriculum to all and is available for access at any time. It allows parents to engage and feel included in my classroom community. The outcome I achieved in delivering my classroom website is having an effective communication tool providing feedback between families, students and teachers daily. This has been successful all year and really beneficial during COVID-19 lockdowns. I have also received great feedback from parents about this which has excited me to enrich student learning and engagement through this valuable tools.
Evidence:
Communicating with wider networks and communities has given me the opportunity to learn from other Early Career Teachers and experienced teachers. All teachers have their own strategies and approaches and being able to share with the wider community allows new ideas to be considered and moderation to take place. It is a great opportunity to come together with teachers who specialise in the same subjects or teach the same year level, further mixing ideas together for activities and formative and summative assessments. ​Additionally, professional development days provide a lot of planning and discussing time to share effective resources and understand general school approaches, becoming beneficial towards my own teaching.
I am continually looking for opportunities to upskill myself in all areas of my profession. Over the past two years I have attended 70+ hours of professional development days both within the school community and in the wider community. These trainings have thoroughly developed my teaching practices and provided other colleagues in my year level team new ideas. Working collaboratively with not only colleagues, but other Early Career Teachers or Year 5 teachers, has been extremely beneficial for my own practices.
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