I would be announcing a certificate for a student from a different class, not John’s class, as I had previously thought.
We rotated this particular certificate each week and, because of a holiday, I had muddled the rota. My fault completely.
I stepped into the room quietly. The children were engaged in an independent task, so I walked over to the teacher’s desk and explained the change in a sentence or two, keeping my voice low. I expected nothing more than a brief acknowledgement.
Instead, he snapped.
“That’s not fair!”
He slammed his fist on the desk.
In front of twenty or so children.
Seething, he unloaded his frustration about timing, last-minute changes, and school leadership. I had seen this pattern with him before in staff meetings, but this was the first time I had witnessed it in front of children.
Every word was directed at me, his line manager, but the children witnessed the whole exchange.
The children froze as they looked over. A few looked down.
The interaction lasted less than a minute.
Although I followed up with him privately later that day, and he did apologise, I still remember the incident as though it were yesterday. John, not his real name, and I have both long since moved on to new pastures.
Nevertheless, there is something important to explore here. There is a particular kind of silence that follows an adult losing control of themselves in front of children. The children were watching a moral event. They were learning, in real time, how authority behaves under pressure.
To be fair to John, he was good with children and took pride in his work. He worked well with parents and regularly delivered effective lessons. But he also had anger issues that needed to be addressed.
That moment stayed with me, not just because it was professionally very uncomfortable, but because it made something unavoidably clear.
Schools are moral theatres, and children are always watching.
The Problem
Much of the focus in schools and educational policy is placed on curriculum content and pedagogical approach. Both of these matter of course. But one of the most overlooked truths in education, I believe, is that children’s character is shaped based on how adults behave in front of them.
Character education is often treated as an initiative, a lesson, or an assembly theme. In reality, it is the invisible curriculum that permeates across both home and school. It is taught daily through what adults model: how we speak, how we respond under pressure, how we handle frustration, how we repair mistakes, and how we use our authority.
When I think back to my own days as a student, I remember very little about the content of ordinary lessons. What I remember much more clearly is how different teachers made me feel through their behaviour.
This is where ethical leadership becomes more demanding than operational leadership.
Operational leadership asks whether systems work. Ethical leadership asks how adults behave.
In John’s classroom, the issue was not my mistake. The real issue was what the moment revealed about John’s behaviour towards other adults when he was upset, and what that behaviour was permitted to communicate in front of children.
One of the most neglected ethical questions in schools is how adults treat other adults.
Maya Angelou famously said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Many school leaders and teachers will recognise this. Most of us have worked with colleagues whose behaviour makes them difficult to bear.
And this matters because children do not only listen to what adults say. They study how adults behave.
The Insight
Through my doctoral research in Ethical Leadership, I have come to see schools as moral ecologies. They are not simply instructional systems. They are ethical environments in which adults are on show; they are being observed, interpreted, and imitated.
What adults repeatedly model becomes what institutions repeatedly teach.
Aristotle is useful here because virtue is most visible in action under pressure. Temperance, patience, justice, and self-command are habits revealed precisely when control is hardest.
Anyone can speak about respect in calm conditions.
The ethical test is what happens when one is irritated and dealing with a mistake. That is where character really becomes visible.
Practical Application
The practical implication is uncomfortable but unavoidable: schools cannot claim to form character in children without first demanding moral discipline from adults.
This requires a more serious understanding of professional conduct.
In many schools, adult professionalism is treated as procedural: punctuality, competence, planning, compliance, and basic, albeit key, safeguarding responsibilities. But ethical professionalism, I would argue, goes deeper. It includes emotional discipline, relational restraint, public dignity, and moral consistency.
Adults do not need to be perfect. But they do need to practise what they preach.
This means asking moral questions about how adults choose to behave at school.
No one is immune to failure. But when adults show humility, accountability, and a willingness to apologise, they teach children that mistakes happen and that mistakes can be repaired.
The aim is to help form a respectful, responsible, and moral society.
The opposite is equally instructive: pride, arrogance, and a refusal to take ownership.
Apology, voluntarily given by adults, is moral instruction. I strive whenever I make a mistake, as I often do, to apologise. That also means I apologise to children if and when I get it wrong.
When adults repair well, children learn that authority is compatible with humility.
That may be one of the most important lessons schools can teach.
Concluding thoughts…
Children are always learning from adult tone. Adult restraint. Adult ego. Adult apology. And from what adults do when frustrated.
In schools, children learn as much from adult behaviour as from adult instruction.