To improve students academic outcomes this auto-ethnographic dissertation examines my teaching practice in the Ukraine and in the United States, and the similarities and differences between the two educational systems. This study, designed in the form of auto-ethnographic vignettes, explores the effect of my personal and professional metamorphosis on the academic advancement of my students, and investigates the conditions that molded me into a teacher I am today. Through the reflections on the process of self-development as an individual and a teacher, I discovered that building the relationship of trust between school and family is an underlying condition for improving students academic performance, discipline, and overall well being. This dissertation enabled me to analyze the boundaries between the personal and the professional, and to identify human ethics as the major component for efficient teaching and productive student learning. The study highlights teacher ethical leadership as a key factor that permeates the entire pedagogical process to make it complete and successful.