Code of Professional Practice

As a teacher, I now have to always keep the Code of Professional Practice in the back of my mind.One of the codes that I was not as familiar with, or did not understand quite as well was code #13 "A teacher or group of teachers makes only authorized representations to outside bodies on behalf of the Society or its local associations. Without the express permission of the Society, no member(s) conferring with outside bodies may explicitly or implicitly claim that they represent the Society or its local associations." After our discussions in class, I discovered that this means that you are only representing the school when you are dealing with school issues and you can never say that you are speaking on behalf of the school about an issue when you have not got permission to do so. For example, if you are at a public meeting and you are expressing your opinion but you were not asked by your employer to attend this meeting, then you must make it clear that you are speaking on behalf of yourself and not the school.


Another section of the code that I find really interesting is code #7 "A teacher first directs any criticism of the professional activity of a colleague to that colleague in private. Only after informing the colleague of the intent to do so, the complainant may direct in confidence the criticism to appropriate officials through the proper channels of communication." I found this one interesting because I don't believe that this happens all the time. This code means that you should not talk to the principal about any problems that you have with a colleague before you personally approach that colleague and talk out your concern with him/her. Likewise, if you have an issue with your principal you must go to him/her and talk about it privately before you direct your concern to the higher up. An example of this, is that if you have a colleague that you both teach the same students and you overhear the colleague talking about this student in the staff room and about what he heard is going on with her at home and how it is affecting her marks and behavior in his classroom. Since you teach this student also, you have also heard about what is going on at home with her and you have seen a change in her marks and behavior in your classroom, however, you know that it is not right for him to be giving out this information to all the other staff members at your school. In order to address this situation properly, you need to privately meet with your colleague and explain to him in a polite way that you don't feel that that is information that needs to be spread across the whole staff. If your colleague continues to chat about this student in the staff room then you can tell him that you are going to speak with the administration about the issue because you don't feel that his behavior is appropriate. The whole time you are speaking with your colleague however, you must be sure you are doing so in a professional manner and not insulting him in anyway.


Personally I feel that it will be easy for me to get used to abiding by these codes of conduct. I think that each one will come naturally to me as a professional. Also, as a professional I just have to remember that I will always be looked upon as a teacher and that I must act accordingly all the time. I think that the Code of Professional Practice is a good list of practices for teachers to have because it does not exclude the idea that potentially you will have issues with a colleague and it explains to you how to handle these situations professionally. Also, it reminds people that all information that they encounter is confidential however, you are not breaching the code of confidentiality by reporting child abuse. This is a good tie to have into the code because as teachers, it is our responsibility to report such behavior that we believe is inappropriate and harmful to a child. As professionals, this code will eventually, if not already have become natural to us and we will have no troubles implementing it into our daily lives.