Those who work with young children often face difficult ethical decisions. You are realizing your center has various situations that compromise the code, but unfortunately your lead teacher and a few others within the center don’t see the issues the same way you do. They have given you the opportunity to justify your rationale and create a potential plan to rectify the situations.
Review the scenarios below and choose two situations to rationalize and resolve for your lead teacher and colleagues. Use the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct and Statement of Commitment as a guide to make recommendations and identify rationale. There are four areas of ethical responsibilities: children, families, colleagues, and community and society. Be sure to select scenarios from different areas.
Scenarios:
#1: Your center has a rule that no outside food is to be brought in for snack or lunch for a child under any circumstances. While your weekly menus often support the diverse needs of the learners, you now have a student who has extreme sensitivities and allergies. When trying to create the menu, you are realizing that the other students would need to eat unbalanced meals and would begin lacking the proper nutrition. You have asked your teacher about this rule to see if it can be changed for this situation and she said no.
#2: One child is having a hard time adjusting to class and his mom would like to stay a little bit longer in the beginning of class to help him get familiar and comfortable. You were allowing this and it was working very well, however your director has now told you that this is not allowed. Parents are required to drop off their kids and leave immediately after.
#3: A little girl is having issues with another little boy in the class. They often fight with each other and recently she told you that he always tries to touch her and watch her in the bathroom and she doesn’t like it. You took this very seriously, however your director told you that she is only five years old so it’s nothing to worry about. You believe you should contact both parents in this situation, but the director argues that the parents will think you aren’t doing a good job watching them.
#4: You have a few children in your class with various cultures and religions. Some of these conflict directly with the holiday calendar that your teacher has created. You’ve asked your teacher if you can modify the activities to help bring in all of the cultures of the families and she turned you down. One parent has let you know that they have issues with Christmas due to their own religion, however your teacher said, “This is the way it’s always been.”
#5: You proposed curriculum surrounding manners and helping others. You believe this curriculum is important for the age you are working with, as a lot of the kids don’t seem to understand the basic principles. Your teacher isn’t open to the change, but you are seeing more and more selfish behaviors and think this type of curriculum could really make an impact on their lives. Most of your kids come from families where parents work at least two jobs, so you believe they just don’t have the time to teach their kids these basic principles.
To complete your assignment, identify each component below for each scenario:
Summary of the scenario and justification that proves how this situation is unethical (rely heavily on the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct and Statement of Commitment here and point to specific principles within the code).
Identify appropriate resources to use for the scenario and the individuals necessary to inform.
Create a plan to not only solve the problem now, but also to prevent it from occurring again in the future.
In your paper,
Include an introduction and a conclusion.
Summarize both scenarios and the specific code numbers that were compromised within the scenarios.
Identify the proper individuals necessary to inform.
Determine appropriate resources for both scenarios.
Explain the steps necessary to problem solve each scenario.
The Ethical Scenarios Paper
