Educators act ethically and maintain the integrity, credibility and reputation of the profession.
There is a fine balance as an educator between authenticity and professionalism. Let me tell a story from my high school experience to illustrate this.
English was a subject in high school that nobody really cared about. You basically had to finish all the stuff the teacher asked you to and, in the end, you’d get a good enough grade as long as you read the novels/short stories etc. I had one English teacher in particular who is often “meme-d” on and brought up to this day for how much of a joke his class was. I hadn’t really thought about this before now, but his class actually ended up providing me with something I didn’t get from almost any other class, and that was freedom. In grade 10 we read To Kill a Mockingbird (as most do at that grade level) and we were given an end of novel project to do. It was open-ended and he gave us some examples of things we could do. Most people did a poster, drawing, or essay, but two friends of mine and I decided we’d do a video. Specifically, we did a video re-enactment of various scenes from the novel, following each scene up with a “how it should’ve gone” parody scene in which Scout dies (SPOILERS: for example, Scout actually gets shot in the yard of the house, the gum Scout gets from the tree is poisonous, etc)
         We ended up putting a lot of work into this project, spending multiple days after school storyboarding, filming, and editing. We also got a pretty good mark which was nice, but I know that I could’ve spent 40 minutes and churned out an essay that would’ve got me the same mark and saved me all that time. The point of the matter however is that to THIS DAY my friends and I still yell out “SHE’S DEAD!”, copying the voice I used in our video project. My friend streams on Twitch sometimes and his follower notification is a cut-out animation of me shimmying in an old suit-jacket (as Atticus Finch). Basically, this project transcended school entirely and now stands alone as one of the more referenced inside jokes I have.
         All this happened for pretty much one reason and that’s that our teacher, who ran the “joke class”, was authentic and open enough with us that we felt comfortable doing something a bit outlandish ourselves. Each of us contributed something to that video that had nothing to do with our “school persona” and made us a bit more vulnerable, but we were willing to do it because we were confident that we wouldn’t be punished or shamed for it. Looking back on this, I can’t even be sure if all this was intentional on our teacher’s part, but I know it worked. I have rich and happy memories of that class, and of that novel, more so than any other novel or story I’ve had to do for a class. These are the moments I want to be able to help provide for my students one day.
What does this have to do with ethics and integrity? You may even look at this story and see it as against Standard 2 since it talks about a teacher having a “joke” class. I would argue however that this is the epitome of balance between professionalism and authenticity. The teacher in this story followed all standards properly, and managed to create an environment that was friendly, inviting, and open to different ideas. It shows that you don’t have to choose between authenticity and professionalism. The teacher was very much himself in front of us. He didn’t try to be the “cool” teacher, and he didn’t rule with an iron fist either. Overall, I would describe him as someone who knew his role extremely well. Someone you could trust and joke with like a friend, but still held an air of authority and professionalism when it mattered.