2.5: Professional Relationships with Children

When investigating ethics, it is important to define the educator’s ethical and moral obligations to children. Our number one duty as educators, regardless of our role in the classroom, is:

Code 1.1- "Do no harm to children.”

This means we must provide environments that are safe, healthy (physically and emotionally), respectful, caring, nurturing, relationship building, diverse, equitable, inclusive, and responsive.

Code 2.2- Care for and educate children in positive emotional, social, cultural, and learning environments that are developmentally appropriate, cognitively stimulating, and that affirm, support, value, and promote all aspects of each child’s identities and abilities.

When we think of positive characteristics of a good educator, these traits come to mind:

• Honesty

• Mutual respect

• Trustworthy

• Responsive to needs

• Reciprocal relationship builder

• Caring

• Encouraging

• Kind

• Empathetic/understanding

• Patient

• Humble

• Knowledgeable

• Open to alternative perspectives

• Well-regulated

• Non-judgmental

• Optimistic

• Perceptive

• Reflective

• Intentional

• Good communicator

• Good listener

• WAGER (Warm, Accepting, Genuine, Empathetic, & Respectful) (See below)

• Which characteristics are we missing?

Intentionality

What type of educator do you want to be? It is imperative that we think about this. Positive traits are more likely to occur when we define them and dwell on them. Intentionality means that we are consciously thinking about something, in advance of acting, and we have awareness and are mindful of our actions. We all have the ability to be intentional about how we treat others. We also have the power and authority to become the type of educator that we admire.

WAGER

The acronym for WAGER stands for: W= Warmth, A= Acceptance, G= Genuineness, E= Empathy, & R= Respect. These are characteristics that build a great foundation when creating a positive social/emotional learning environment (Kostelnik, Soderman, Stein, & Gregory, 2015). Other strategies include:

1. Listen attentively, (maintain eye contact, but don’t stare; smile & nod; and give verbal cues to let the person know you are interested)

2. Provide appropriate privacy for corrective feedback or personal help

3. Refrain from fidgeting, messing with your clothing/hair, and responding to other distractions and

4. Be fully present

Being Fully Present​​​​​​

Being fully present is a gift or “present” that we give the children we teach and the coworkers we work with. Someone who truly listens to you is a blessing. We all know what it feels like when we are having a conversation with someone who is honestly not interested. It is painful when we are talking to a person, whose eyes are looking past us, searching the room for something or someone else. Regardless of their words, their actions speak volumes, and we know that we are not being listened to. Most toddler tantrums are in direct relationship to not feeling heard. Eventually, we typically avoid talking to people who don’t listen to us because we feel devalued.

Values

Positive characteristics, values, and beliefs, work together. Values refer to principles or standards of behavior. Values are those hidden motivators that make us choose a certain set of actions, and they impact our behavior and character, in our day-to-day lives.

Values are closely related to an individual's motivation and will most likely affect decision-making or conflict-resolution skills. Values serve as guidelines for managing the self in light of others' expectations. Values facilitate the social and personal interactions between people and allow them to take positions on social, economic, legal, political, ethical, and aesthetic issues and can be used to persuade, influence, judge, evaluate, praise, or blame others.

Beliefs

A belief refers to the conviction or acceptance that something exists or is true. It is a statement in which one has trust and confidence in its accuracy. Beliefs can be positive or negative, true or false, challenged or untested, and/or beliefs may even change when challenged. Clusters of beliefs evolve into a hierarchy of attitudes (Noland, 2009, chapter 7). Beliefs affect morals and values.

The main difference between values and beliefs is that values are principles, ideals or standards of behavior, while beliefs are convictions that we generally accept to be true. It is these ingrained beliefs that influence our attitudes, and behavior. Unfortunately, both values and beliefs can allow individuals to rationalize particular actions that are unacceptable to others. Through rationalizing, people can still feel a sense of morality or competence. Differences in values are at the base of all conflicts, while suspending personal judgments and understanding another's viewpoint, facilitates true and honest dialogue and the possibility for collaboration (Noland, 2009).

A Glossary of Terms Related Specifically to Ethics

Code of Ethics: Defines the core values of the field and provides guidance for what professionals should do when they encounter conflicting obligations or responsibilities in their work.

Values: Qualities or principles that individuals believe to be desirable or worthwhile and that they prize for them- selves, for others, and for the world in which they live.

Core Values: Commitments held by a profession that are consciously and knowingly embraced by its practitioners because they make a contribution to society. There is a difference between personal values and the core values of a profession.

Morality: Peoples’ views of what is good, right, and proper; their beliefs about their obligations; and their ideas about how they should behave.

Ethics: The study of right and wrong, or duty and obligation, that involves critical reflection on morality and the ability to make choices between values and the examination of the moral dimensions of relationships.

Professional Ethics: The moral commitments of a profession that involve moral reflection that extends and enhances the personal morality practitioners bring to their work, that concern actions of right and wrong in the workplace, and that help individuals resolve moral dilemmas they encounter in their work.

Ethical Responsibilities: Behaviors that one must or must not engage in. Ethical responsibilities are clear-cut and are spelled out in the Code of Ethical Conduct (for example, early childhood educators should never share confidential information about a child or family with a person who has no legitimate need for knowing).

Ethical Dilemma: A moral conflict that involves determining appropriate conduct when an individual faces conflicting professional values and responsibilities (Sciarra, Lynch, Adams, & Dorsey, 2016, p. 358).