Teachers, What Are Your Values?

When I begin to work with a new class of students I always share with them my core values. I share what I believe in, what goals I have for our time together and my why.

I ask them to hold me accountable to these values. I share that teaching can be a difficult and demanding job and that I want them to let me know if I stray from these values.

I ask them to join me in making these values a central part of how we spend time together. I invite them to engage in these values and to embrace them each and every day.

I encourage them to explore their own values as a learner and how, together, we will aim to discover our individual strengths and stretches so that we can begin to bring these skills to any context or future endeavour.

So what are my core values?

I value constructivism and the belief that each student that enters our classroom is full of rich history, experience, narrative and understanding. I aim to lean into this prior knowledge and that together, we can leverage this to create new understanding. Kids do not enter our classrooms as empty vessels ready to be filled up with the content of our curriculum. We make connections. We explore our curiosities. We collaborate and co-construct.

I value competencies and the belief that the legacy of a child’s schooling should be the skills, mindsets and dispositions that can be applied to all of life’s experiences. Currently in our classroom we are exploring seven competencies: creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, curiosity, empathy and self-control. We talk about these competencies, we set personalized goals to them, we reflect on and assess our growth towards adopting them more meaningfully and I coach and model each of them as we observe them surfacing in class.

I value talk and believe that whoever is doing the talking is doing the learning. I encourage students to talk as much as possible. I have adopted equitable talk frameworks so students all have a fair opportunity to process their thoughts, rehearse their sharing and engage in class discourse in a safe and confident manner. I share with students that the more they talk, they more effective I can be in working with them. I tell them that when they talk, I listen, I really listen, so that I can get a better understanding of how I can support each and every one of them.

I value wellness and ensuring that we all strive to feel good about ourselves, feel confident in our learning, and that we discover processes to maintain balance and wellbeing. I will be flexible and agile and considerate of their wellness. I will ask them how they are doing, call on them to reflect on their stress or anxiety and I promise them that I will listen to their needs. I will employ structures and processes that allow students to be successful in school without jeopardizing their wellbeing, heightening their stress or triggering their anxiety.

I value relationships and building a community of learning where trust and psychological safety will allow students to take risks, be comfortable trying on new things, feel confident in giving and accepting feedback, and overall, take on more ownership and agency over their learning. I value getting to know students and in turn, having them get to know me. I value centering students and in turn, de-centering myself. I value shifting roles in the classroom as we are partners in learning, as we co-design and co-construct, and as we collaborate and communicate.

I value student-driven assessment and ensuring that students can self-assess with accuracy and confidence. I believe that too often in my teaching I have been the assessment expert over a student’s learning. I have been the one who knew where each of my students were at in terms of their growth, where they needed to go to next, and how they could go about getting there. My aim is to ensure I coach and model assessment so clearly and intentionally that slowly, over time, students can take on this ownership over assessment of their learning.

What are your core values? Do your students know them? How do your core values take shape in your unit planning and lesson design? How are your core values evident in the core values of your colleagues and school?

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