The life skills classroom at hasting high provides community based instruction to its small group of students with severe disabilities. the district provides some funds for transportation and community outings, but it isn’t usually enough to keep the students busy throughout the school year. to with the funds, the principal allows the students, with the support of the teachers, to sell breakfast items to the school, three days a week. this fundraiser becomes very popular with the rest of the student body because the breakfast items are inexpensive, delivered straight to their 1st period classes, and over all, they get to feel good about the life skills classroom in a positive way.
ever since the life skills fundraising began, the student council sponsor, mrs. sumner, has noticed that support for their daily candy fundraiser has declined, and she believes it is due to the popularity of the breakfast items being sold. one day she notices a life skills student and one of the teachers, mr. moore, out making deliveries and collecting money. the student is clearly struggling with handling the money, so mr. moore her by taking some of the money and putting it into his own pocket. mrs. sumner sees only this small interaction and has no other context for the exchange.
later that day, when speaking to a group of other teachers she mentions seeing mr. moore putting some of the breakfast fundraiser money into his pocket. over the next several days, this comment makes its way through the faculty, and when she is questioned by other faculty members, mrs. sumner’s response is that she did see mr. moore pocket the money, but she doesn’t know what he did with it after that. in the same conversations, she also casually mentions the expensive new car mr. moore recently started driving.
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. moore and/or mrs. sumner 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?