4.2 Replies- reply to the two posts below in 100-200 words
LaTanya
As the program progressed, I reflected on the role of ethics in my studies and career. Regarding my ethical values, I have learned that it comes down to practicing what you preach. To succeed in that area, I need to promote trust and build a positive relationship with staff and a strong culture. I want to maintain open communication and support so they can see that we are a team. Also, along with those contents, it comes down to treating employees and, in my case, students and families fairly. In education, we want to protect our student’s records ethically, their rights, and any other personal information that may come up. So in all transparency, if you are not involved with that student and their family, you should never know what is going on personally with them. Ethics has such a vast spectrum that you have to lack a moral compass or be selfish not to care how being unethical in the workplace or life has severe consequences and can cause harm to the next person. So somewhere down the line, people must get educated and understand self-awareness and how the world can be affected by being unethical. I still feel ill-equipped to handle ethical issues regarding staff and students/families, especially in my workplace. I have been watching my leaders put out fire after fires to accommodate families while the teachers are burned out and mentally stressed, and ready to walk out. It is like, where do you draw the line and say hey, your child can no longer go here due to consistent behaviors or do you continue to let a good staff member go because you feel they are just replaceable in a field where there is a shortage? That is my dilemma when considering if I want to stay in the education field myself next school year. The parents are no help either. They just let their kids come to school and disrespect teachers, and then you call, and they do not even answer anymore. So I am trying to find ways and strategies to improve it. I attended a focus group on Monday to discuss ways to stop student behaviors and promote healthier classrooms. My goal is to work with staff to provide a more secure and positive learning environment.
Scott
When I think about ethics I think about morals and values too. As a leader we need to have a good understating of all three because each one of them ties into the other. Values give us the ability to decide between right and wrong. Morals are our formed beliefs from our values and whether we are an ethical leader or not is based off those two. The decisions we make are greatly affected by how we view things and what our values and beliefs are. Throughout this course I have learned to narrow down what values I truly value and it has helped me be more confident in my leadership.
I’m sure we all know or have seen a supervisor who always done things in the grey area, never really did everything to its fullest and that affected the people below him. Not only is that a bad look as a leader it also is teaching people below, they can do the same thing. It is the same thing as the content we are studying. If we have bad information to study, then we are going to learn things the wrong way and none of us want that. As an instructor I have to ensure what I am saying and doing is correct because new booms watch very closely to what I am doing and usually the first time they learn something weather it is right or not they remember that, and it is hard to reteach them something later if what they learned was wrong and I believe it’s the same for us learning how to be leaders.
Leading with ethics also means having the difficult conversations with people and that is something I am working on the most. I am trying to find ways to make those difficult situations less difficult so it’s easier to have them. I have learned that by not having them it only gets more difficult and can affect everything around us.