J E N N I P E R H Y L B E R T

My personal

Code of
Ethics
I have a responsibility, as an educator
to
1. Teach with integrity and maintain
professionalism.
2. Foster the collaboration of intellectual and
emotional growth.
3. Develop conscientious and informed
citizens.
4. Form strong and nurturing relationships.
5. Keep communication open, accurate, and
honest.
6. Be self-aware by reflecting on experiences.
7. Leave something behind for others to
ponder.
 CODE OF ETHICS REFLECTION JENNIPER HYLBERT JULY 2016

M y deeply held beliefs, as an educator, span beyond my sole

responsibilities as a teacher. My personal code of ethics represents who I am at the
core, and who I strive to be, every day of my life. I believe that you should be no
different, in your classroom as you are outside of it. The genuine and authentic part of
you, that students see and interact with, will be the part they connect with and respect.
I am who I am, I am proud of who I have become, and I strive to continue growing, as a
person.
My coursework during my Ethics in School and Society class has influenced my
understanding of ethics, in general, and my own personal code of ethics. The very first
assignment we had, when we entered class, was to create a quick write about our
starting point, and I wrote, I want to discover common ground, with my students, that
will nurture both the teacher and the students understanding of the world. My
understanding of that primary goal has been enriched by the class assignments in the
following ways:
First, I deepened our understanding of our ethics by examining who I would
include on my own personal board of directors, if I could examine who has been an
influential part of my life. I learned the common theme, which ran through my support
team, was kindness, worldly knowledge, unconditional support, and strength to
overcome obstacles. I came to the realization that my world was not a lonely venture,
but a collaborative experience of emotional and intellectual growth.
Later, we discussed the conditions I could control in our educational environment.
I surprising learned that I could control many decisions within my classroom such as
how I present information, how I choose to communicate, behavior management
strategies, physical layout, materials, and my temperament. In other ways, I learned I
may not have control over everything such as government mandates on Common Core
Standards or standardized testing, but I could influence curriculum choices by choosing
to join committees, and I could influence my districts decisions by being a positive
voice at meetings and continuing to be involved in district decisions.
In other ways, the video clip by Parker J. Palmer, Cultural Inventions to Help Us
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Hold Tensions Creatively helped me recognize that learning comes from moments
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 CODE OF ETHICS REFLECTION JENNIPER HYLBERT JULY 2016

fear and accept the challenges we face. The exposure to new knowledge, emotional
and intellectual contradictions, and the opportunity to have in-depth conversations with
others is what fascinates me about life and teaching, which is why I included those
points in my code of ethics.
By the same token, the article, Motions of Coherence taught me that change is
inevitable. Embracing change, although it is difficult, allows us to survive. Allowing
myself to try new things, being brave enough to fail and still getting back up again, and
expanding my ideas of culture are including in my code of ethics, because of their
importance. Differentness can bring wholeness, and a person or a teacher cant really
become an ethically whole person until they learn to say, lets see what happens!
Likewise, Sir Ken Robinsons video, How to Change Education from the Ground
Up, and took the idea of change, in the classroom, and turned that philosophy into
useable, educational advice. He reiterated that we all want our own children and
students to become economically independent. Not only do we need to embrace
change in order to become economically independent, as Parker Palmer suggested, but
Sir Ken Robinson states that we need to do this quickly. The way to do this quickly is to
look at education as a system of people, not a machine. In the past we have had a
political structure that believed in a top down approach and then tried to get everyone
to conform to those ideas. However, true change and quick change does not
successfully happen that way, because people rebel and alienate themselves from any
process that gives them a directive. His suggestion was that we take away the school,
the materials, and other distractions, that hinder the process of education and break it
down to a finer point. What is that finer point? It is the performer (teacher) and the
audience (learner) that contains the power of change. Teachers are not just an
instrument for instructions, but an art form. The change, in the end begins with us, and
our relationship with our students.

The whole idea is to

become comfortable with
paradox, to entertain
contradiction, as maybe
opening you to a new idea,
to tolerate ambiguity; to
actually relish this complex
force field.
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