Educators act ethically and maintain integrity, credibility and reputation of the profession/
To be a teacher is to inherently be put into a more public situation compared to other jobs, and our position is critically important since those who people care about most, children, are in our care for a significant part of their formative years.
During Block 1 I recall a warning that there was a previous teacher candidate who through their inadvisable decisions of what they shared in a public venue ended up being unable to become a teacher. I am aware that this was a reminder that even though we are in a circumstance where we ‘got in’ that we still had to display the professionalism that allowed us to enter the program. So standard 2 and the requirement to keep students anonymous if I would use them was embedded in my mind.
For myself there was only one event where I thought that I had caused an issue which was entirely my mind creating the issue out of nowhere. On the first Thursday of my first practicum my car had an issue starting when I had to go home so I put my stuff down outside my car, jumped my car, then got my stuff and left for home. It was a while after I got home, about 9:00 that I realized that I did not have my file case, shown here:
I thought nothing of it since I could use something else to easily bring whatever I needed and since it was not with me it would obviously be in the classroom where the things I didn’t take home were left.
Then I thought too much about it and by the time I was not quite asleep I led myself to believe that I had forgotten it outside when I had driven away. I did not get as much sleep as I would have liked, though I think I eventually fell asleep.
My conclusion from that is that I ought not to focus on more than simply ‘not messing up’ since although that is the minimum putting that as a focus can lead to more stress and general negative outcomes. I of course will still try not to mess up but my myopic focus is better spent on making things that my students will enjoy, which would much better contribute to standard 2.
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