Who knew all these ethical cases would be so disheartening?

As we never had the chance to address some of the cases from The Ethics of Teaching in class I’d like to address some of the issues there. While reading chapter 6, Democracy, Professionalism, and Teaching with Integrity, I was struck by how important it is to pick our battles as teachers. I can only speak for myself but when I start teaching I want to be an advocate for my students. I want to be able to protect them and make sure they get the education they deserve, but that can be hard if you pick the wrong battle and lose your job. In the first case Irene Canebrake is charged with the dilemma of teaching a curriculum her students just aren’t ready to handle. Her approach was to talk to her principal and write a letter explaining her issues with the required curriculum. A step I think any of us would take, but when it didn’t work what would you have done next? It is hard to understand all the intricacies of these cases in one or two pages and say what we would do, but if I have taken anything away from this book it is the fact that I am going to be faced with ethical dilemmas much more often than I would like. Returning to the case, one of the statements Angela Dormer makes defending the decision to include fractions on the second grade curriculum despite some opposition was it is necessary, “in light of the need of higher standards in education”. That statement is one that is often pulled out in educational discussions and it worries me that we are for some unknown reason putting higher standards above the needs of our students. The third case in the chapter deals with Moses Jones dilemma of having to teach for a standardized test. This is one issue I will luckily be able to avoid teaching art but for the rest of you balancing what your students need to know for a test and what you feel they should know for life is going to be a constant struggle. How do we teach our students and deal with the bureaucracy of school systems? How do we pick which battles really matter? How do we keep from getting as frustrated and bitter as the teachers in these cases?