Integrity and conscience I think are the most important and have shared meaning. Professional integrity means having strong moral principles in the job you do and you want to do the best you can for yourself and for your students. Not only do we need to meet the standards within the GTCS, we need to maintain them through continued professional development in our careers.

Compassion, empathy, kindness, justice, fairness, patience, self-control and moral courage I feel all come under the same category as they all have similar meaning. All of the terms are subjective and can be hard to define by different people e.g. pupils, parents and colleagues. For example, teachers need to be open-minded and patient to allow equal opportunities for students to speak. We need to be concerned about all of our students and be empathetic to their emotions or feelings and also morally courageous to act on something if we feel that child is at risk. A just attitude, a fairness in rewards and punishments are just as important; we have all been through school before and know how unfair things can be. A “that’s just life” approach is not acceptable in the classroom.

All qualities are essential because we as educators need to adapt to the ever changing daily environment. I believe integrity is the most important as it comes in to question if we are not passionate and proactively striving to improve ourselves professionally – we can’t rely on experience alone.