Question

Ms. Olsen and Mr. Parker both teach Physical education at Putnam Grove Elementary school, and have, after assessing the need for their students to have more opportunities for physical activity, decided to start an after school run club. The afterschool clubs and programs at PGE are typically very popular with the students, so Ms. Olsen and Mr. Parker have decided to cap run club membership at 100 students for the first year, until they can determine how many more students they can safely accommodate in the program. This will depend on parent volunteers, number of students who attend regularly, and behavior of students while they are participating. When they announce the run club and begin taking applications, they are excited to find out that over 200 students are interested in participating, which means they will need to set the criteria for choosing which students will be admitted. The criteria they choose include: 1. Did the student submit the application by the specified deadline? 2. Parents or guardians must sign a letter acknowledging that they are able to come pick their child up when they have stayed afterschool on run club days. 3. Students must not have any office referrals for behavior. 4. Is the child a sibling of another student that has been accepted into the run club? In speaking to their colleagues, they are aware of certain families who often sign their children up for these afterschool programs, but often fail to pick them up on time on meeting days. Before they begin the selection process, they have already determined a list of students who will not get in to the run club, even if they meet all of the criteria above, due to a history of late pick-ups by the parents. Mr. Parker notices that most of the names on the list of students being excluded fall in the low SES category, but he doesn’t mention this because he does not want to get stuck waiting at the school when parents don’t show up on time. Ms. Olsen accepts a few late applications because they are students who are good friends with her daughter, and she wanted them to be able to participate together. Finally, a student with Autism, who is an avid runner, was denied entry because he is known to have behavior issues (though he does not have office referrals since his behavior issues are addressed through his IEP). Mr. Parker and Ms. Olsen are the only ones who were present during the selection process, so no one knows why any of the students were not admitted, only that they had to cap the membership at 100.

Questions:

1. Identify the behaviors (if any) that you believe violate standards in the Educator Code of Ethics?

2. Which standards do you think were violated, explain your reasoning. If you feel that no standards were violated, explain your reasoning?

3. Should Mr. Parker and/or Ms. Olsen have handled this situation differently so as not to violate the Code of Ethics, or (if you feel that there was no violation) to avoid their actions being called into question?

Answer 1

1. There were a lot of behaviours that violated the standards of the Educators Ethics. Three of them majorly being- not being inclusive to students of the lower ses categories; not including a student who suffers from an intellectual deficiency and also accepting students that he knew before hand or through someone.

2. The standards of being inclusive to every and each student, not having any ethical reasons to not include certain members was looked over.

3. Yes, Mr Parker and Ms Olsen should have been more inclusive and should have let children belonging to different categories also join the club. They should have also consulted the authorities about the same.