Stephen CogginsDr. Westbrook AEL 635Personal Code of EthicsI believe that a leaders are built on a solid foundation of morals andethics. Sometimes as school leaders, we must put our morals aside to do what isethically right. Most of the times our morals are religiously and spirituallybased. We cannot make decisions based on our religion because that may showbiased toward a certain group.

Our jobs as administrators is to create a freethinking democratic student body and our decisions must be directed to helpevery students, not just most of them. As a school leader, I find myselfreflecting on several different things. Here are my personal code of ethics.1.      Provideservices in a nondiscriminatory manner.2.

      Acceptresponsibility for my actions.3.      Seekto improve myself and others around me4.

      Domy job with honesty and integrity5.      Makethe well-being of the students the primary target for decision making6.      Committo serving other before myselfI could make this list goon and on, but I am a believer that if I keep lists shorts, I am more likely tofollow that list. The more complicated I make my goals, rules, and in this casepersonal code of ethics, then it will be more complicated when you are tryingto follow those guidelines. The thing about making rules or goals is that youwant to keep them short, but you want those rules or goals to cover a broadspectrum. Honesty and Integrity may have a different meaning from one person tothe next, but I know what it means to me.

There is no need to define it or make30 personal rules based off of that one rule. These six values define who I am.I want to treat everyone like they are equal. I did not put students orteachers in this statement, because I want to treat everyone with anondiscriminatory manner. The next thing is I want to make sure that I takeresponsibility for my actions. This is a hard thing to do.

I am a team person.I believe that in order for us to be a team, I have to give the success to myteachers and students, and take the blame when things go bad. I also want tohelp improve others around me including myself. Normally I would include sometype of professional development in this statement, but I don’t want torestrict improving ourselves professional to just professional development.Number 4 is one of my favorite. I believe that if I do my job with honesty andintegrity, then I will be able to go home and sleep at night.

There are manyheadaches that come with being a school leader and the more decisions that Imake with honesty and integrity will help me to go home at night feeling goodabout the job that I have done. The fifth personal rules is directed towardsthe students. Without them, we would not have school. Besides myself and myteachers, my students are my main concern. I want to make them my primarytarget when making a decision, but not only that, I want to make the well-beingof all students the primary target for decision making. And the last thing isto commit to serving other before myself. This is religious to me.

It does nothave to be religious to others, and it will not infringe upon anyone’s rights,but Jesus said that in order to lead, we must first serve. I never want to stopbeing a servant for my teachers and my students. I have yet to become anadministrator, so I have very few experiences as far as my personal valuesbeing tested. However, I did have a conflict of interest one time that testedmy honesty and integrity. To some, this story may seem a little petty, but tome it was a big deal.

When I first started teaching, I had the opportunity tocoach middle school baseball. At my school, sports are a big deal, especiallybaseball. We have players that just specialize in that sports, even though Idon’t agree with that.

Anyways, I had a parent that came up to me one day afterpractice and was concerned about her son’s playing time. Well, I wasn’t thehead coach, but I just told the parent to just tell her son to keep working.That sounds like the cliché thing that a coach would say, but I knew it was asafe response. The parent then offered to pay me for coaching outside ofpractice.

It was just an immediate response to decline, because I never acceptmoney to do things that I love. I told the parent that I would not accept themoney, but I would work with her son after practice every day. So at the end ofthe year, the players playing time did not increase, and the next year thatplayer got cut. The parent was irate, but not at me.

This really tested mypersonal ethics in my opinion. I think the integrity of me being a coach wouldhave come into play if I would have accepted that money. I like to think ofmyself as a naturally good person, so a lot of times I respond to things thecorrect way without thinking and I think this was just one of those times.