Month: April 2018

SC fifth-graders reflect on character, decision-making through courtroom role play

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Fifth-graders at South Carolina’s Horry and Georgetown county schools are learning about leadership, civics, the judicial system, bullying, peer pressure, drugs and other important issues through role playing.

Students at nine schools in Horry and Georgetown counties took part in a 20-week class called Project LEAD, which aims to explain the legal and social consequences of criminal behavior, from drug use, to shoplifting, graffiti and other more serious crimes, WPDE reports.

Horry County Solicitor Jimmy Richardson told WMBF in 2016 he started the program with fifth graders at Conway Elementary School after learning about the program from a defense attorney in California. “The hope is that it will affect them in a way that they will think about the consequences of bad choices, and also think about the consequences of good choices,” he said at the time. “We’ve talked to them about gangs and graffiti, we’ve talked to them about avoiding drugs and avoiding bullying.”

This program does more than just provide information. It engages their imagination as they place themselves within the story that they are narrating. This builds on the communitarian vision of moral education. James Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, writes in The Death of Character, “For communitarians, morality exists by social consensus, its moral pedagogy operates mainly through social experience. It is through experience that students participate in moral community and practice moral action.” Students learn about the consequences of their actions through the experience of these complex legal dramas.

Richardson solicited volunteers like Conway mayor and attorney Barbara Blain-Olds to help out, and specifically targeted fifth-grade students based on his experience in the criminal justice system.

“When we looked at the people that have gone through Drug Court, they tell us that they got started with illegal drugs, on average, at about 12 years old, so fifth, sixth grade,” he said. “ … I can tell you this; right now, there are a lot of voices out there, one big voice calling out to them are these little local gangs and we want to be a positive voice.”

The program, which has since added 8 schools, concludes with a mock trial that allows students to play the roles of judge, prosecutor, witness and defendant in a real courtroom. This year, at a mock trial in a North Myrtle Beach courtroom, students tried a case involving a student who brought a gun to an arcade.

Parents also participated in the trial, working with educators to guide students through the process and help them reflect on the important character issues involved in the case.

“This program teaches kids a valuable lesson of how the judicial system works and how they can come together to … stop all the drugs, and most importantly the bullying, so they don’t end up in the system,” parent Ron Denly told WPDE.

For teachers and principals interesting in knowing more about character and citizenship formation, information can be found at the UK’s Jubilee Centre.

School character program challenges students to go a week with no screen time

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Illinois principal Cynthia Tolbert will do just about anything to get her students at Alhambra Primary and Grantfork Elementary schools to understand what it means to have good character and live a healthy lifestyle.

In the first year of the schools’ “Crusin’ with Character” program, she took a pie in the face. The next, Tolbert dyed her long hair crazy colors, the Belleville News-Democrat reports.

“I will do anything I can to help motivate them and keep them from being on screens too much,” Tolbert told the news site.

Each year, students at both of the Highland School District elementary schools participate in the unique program designed to promote good character, health and wellness through numerous activities, an event capped with a call to “Take the Challenge.”

The challenge involves a five-week course that focuses on how the amount of time students spend watching TV, on computers, playing video games, and using other electronic devices can impact their health, as well as healthier alternatives. Students face a challenge in the final week to go a full five days with no screen time. “Some kids like it. Some kids hate it. But they do get super excited to do the challenge,” Tolbert said.

Teachers and students track their progress throughout the challenge and the classroom that best meets the challenge wins the opportunity to get whacky with Tolbert. Last year, students who won got to Duct tape her to a wall. This year, they covered her with silly string. “I like to do something different each year, just to keep the momentum going with the kiddos,” Tolbert said.

Other “Crusin’ with Character” programs involve a Mini Marathon to get students moving. Over 13 weeks, students walk during recess to accumulate 26.2 miles, then meet up at Alhambra Primary School in May to run the final mile together and celebrate. Other programs involve “Penny Wars” – a change collection drive – to raise money for area charities. This year, students raised $734 for a 10-year-old cancer patient through Leaps of Love, a charity fighting childhood cancer.

“We’re just trying to get kids to be active and think about wellness and doing things for others,” Tolbert told the News-Democrat.

The good intentions of these educators are laudable—particularly Cynthia Tolbert. The culture of the school is being addressed in multiple manners.  Researchers at The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture are cautious, however about the long term benefits of such programs and in The Tragedy of Moral Education in America, the following is concluded:  “What is shown by the available studies is that some of the more general character education programs helped create more positive moral sensibilities in the short term, but over the long term the children in these program did not act differently from those who did not go through them. Programs that used exhortation, pledges, and rewards and punishments had almost no effect at all.” They suggest that the long-term benefits of these efforts be closely monitored.

Teachers and principals wanting to strengthen character education in their school will find useful information and strategies at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.

Wichita district launches new “opportunity” school for disruptive students

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The Wichita, Kansas school district is launching a new “Opportunity Academy” for misbehaving students that will focus more extensively on developing character – an effort to address increasing disciplinary problems in recent years.

The number of suspensions, detentions and trips to the principal’s office in Wichita elementary schools increased from 8,762 four years ago to13,500 incidents last year, despite the fact that district enrollment decreased.

District wide, discipline issues are up 11 percent, and teachers union officials have complained about chaos in the classroom, according to The Wichita Eagle.

“We’ve been looking at areas of need, both academically and in terms of behavior,” district spokesman Terrell Davis said. “And one of those areas is kids who just need additional structure and a hands-on approach.”  School board members unanimously approved a new Bryant Opportunity Academy at a recent meeting to help students “who need a more highly structured, controlled environment,” Davis said.

The Academy will serve 100 kindergarten through sixth grade students who have struggled at other schools by offering smaller class sizes, additional counselors and social workers, and a strong focus on character development, according to the news site.

The effort is part of a broader push to address disciplinary problems that started with daily lessons on character and social and emotional skills at all elementary schools last year.

“We’re looking at school differently for a group of kids who … may not have learned how to play school,” Davis said. “This is a way to think outside of the box to serve those kids.”

The school will open in what was previously Bryant Elementary, one of five schools closed by the district in 2012. A new school funding formula directs additional money to “at-risk” students, though Davis said officials are describing troubled students in terms of “opportunity.”

“We don’t like to use the term ‘at-risk’ to describe our students. We use the term ‘opportunity,’” he said. “We really believe every child has the opportunity for greatness and success … They may come from different places and have different needs, and we just need to meet them wherever they are.”

Researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia are cautious about instances where claims that shifts in vocabulary will reframe the experiences students will have once the new vocabulary are in effect.  Also, in instances where school authorities segregate disruptive students, it places an emphasis on fixing the individual student rather than addressing the deficits in the wider school culture of the previous school. Character is foremost a communal problem not simply an individual one. Moreover, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture sociologist James Hunter in his book, The Death of Character, warns, “Neologisms from the moral education establishment, like ‘prosocial’ are only the most overt and self-conscious attempts to avoid the awkwardness of words like ‘good’ and ‘evil.’” “Troubled students” may well see through the shift in terminology from “at-risk” to “opportunity.” While well intentioned, sometimes it may be necessary start by naming the problem in stark moral terms.

Teachers and principals interested in strengthening the moral ecology of their school will find information and strategies at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.

 

VA school staff form ‘Men of Vision and Purpose’ through mentorship, service work

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Lafayette High School employees Archie Jefferson, William Capers and Andre McLaughlin are developing “Men of Vision and Purpose.”

“Our job as mentors for these young men is not to tell them what to do,” Jefferson, a student advancement coach at Lafayette, told the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily. “Our job is to make sure we create an environment where they feel like they can do anything.”

The three men created the Men of Vision and Purpose mentoring program at the Virginia school in 2016 in response to rising truancy rates and disciplinary problems that were taking a toll on academics.

The men began meeting with male students before class in the school’s gym once a week for teamwork exercises and character building activities, and the program has since swelled to 80 students.

McLaughlin, a master police officer with James City County and the school’s resource officer, told the Daily the intent is to build a bond between school security and students, while helping them to hold themselves accountable for showing up and participating in school.

Students are expected to read copies of Capers’ motivational book “Breaking the Limits,” and to take part in local service projects and fundraisers. Jefferson, Capers and McLaughlin, meanwhile, strive to set an example of how hard work and dedication builds character through their own endeavors outside of school as independent business owners.

“Building relationships with these students is what fuels me on a daily basis,” McLaughlin said.

“What we are looking to do is change the person,” Jefferson added. “We want to touch your life. We want to hold your heart.”

While the program is still relatively new, it recently won support in the form of a $2,000 Innovative Learning Grant from the WJCC Schools Foundation, which funds programs developed by district employees to improve student support services.

Men and manliness have been under assault in recent decades. This is particularly the case in communities dominated by people of color. The success of this program is its holistic mentorship, it’s connecting of teamwork and character, and its encouragement of individual agency. There is a long history in America of celebrating “self-made” men, even though the idea itself is a myth. Historian Jim Cullen, writing in The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture’s The Hedgehog Review, “Problems and Promises of the Self-Made Myth,” warns, “Given the prevalence of past and present societies in which individual citizens are expected to orient their lives around something other than the self, it is an open, and increasingly pressing, question how long the United States can maintain a sense of cohesion and purpose around the self-made man in an economic formulation untethered to a notion of a greater good.”  This program is seeking to bridge that gap.

Capers told the Daily the crew is now working to expand the program to other schools and develop materials for younger students.

“We want this in as many schools as possible,” Jefferson said. “We are passionate about this. This is not something we do. This is who we are.”

Teachers and principals interested in strengthening moral and character formation in their school can find information and support about this work at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.

PA student calls for focus on moral issues to address root causes of school violence

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A student at St. Louis de Monfort Academy in Herndon, Pennsylvania is pointing to moral issues in America as the root cause of school violence, and he’s explaining why he doesn’t think new gun control laws will help the situation.

Student Gregory O. Murphy recently penned a letter to the editor of The Daily Item to highlight why he believes student walkouts across the country to call for gun control in the wake of school shootings is a misguided mission.

“Seeing the reactions from a few schools around America, as a student from St. Louis de Monfort Academy, I believe that the school walkouts are a wrong way of trying to solve the problem,” Murphy wrote. “All of us realize the tragedy of these killings, and we don’t want to see it happen again.

“However, more gun laws won’t solve the problem,” Murphy argued.

This view will be seen as shocking to many, for the default position today is that politics is the first recourse to solving social problems. And yet social science shows that “the amount of law that exists in any society is always inversely related to the coherence and stability of its common culture: law increases as cultural consensus decreases.”   Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture Professor James Hunter of the University of Virginia warns, “It is only logical that problems affecting the society are seen increasingly, if not primarily through the prism of the state; that is, in terms of how law, policy, and politics can solve them…. This is the heart of politicization and it has gone so far as to affect our language, imagination, and expectations.”  In fact, the reality of these pressing social concerns is often beyond the simple solution of passing more laws. Character and culture also play a decisive role in ways that are often overlooked.

Murphy contends school violence is a moral issue with roots in government and politics, largely guided by a modern society that’s lost focus on the true purpose of life. He pointed to a recent column by author and scholar John Horvat II, published in Crisis Magazine shortly after the most recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead in February.

Murphy wrote:

John Horvat II, author of “Return to Order,” puts it well saying in his article “When Will the Shooting Stop?,” that “the nihilistic nature of these dark crimes signals a much deeper problem that strikes at the foundation of modern society.” He continues showing how these mass shootings are the result of a liberalism, which deprives life of purpose, because truly “Nothing makes sense without God.” Without God, there is no longer anything stopping people from evil. Mr. Horvat continues that, “When taken to its final consequences, liberalism presents a despairing worldview, in which man is the product of random causes inside an unintelligible universe.”

Murphy concludes that student walkouts, more gun control laws, and more government intervention will undoubtedly do little to curb violence in schools, particularly school shooters.

“ …(W)e need to change our mentality,” he wrote.

“We have to realize that big problems are only solved with big solutions. We should first address the moral issues,” Murphy continued. “While this is not dealt with, we can only expect the shootings to continue.”

Teachers and principals interested in strengthening the moral culture of their school can find information and support at the UK’s Jubilee Centre.

UI students launch nonprofit to help disabled classmates navigate college

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University of Iowa student Michael Penniman is changing the way disabled students experience college with the help of two friends and a nonprofit start-up they launched last year.

Penniman suffered an injury during a wrestling match with a friend in 2012 that left him a quadriplegic. After years of recovery that required him to relearn to talk and use his arms, he began taking classes at Des Moines Area Community College.

Two years ago, Penniman transferred to the University of Iowa as a sophomore, but he was often left stranded by the home health care companies he relied on to get out of bed and to class each day, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reports.

When his care providers missed shifts, Penniman reached out to his friend and fellow undergraduate Peter Easler, who eventually took over when Penniman’s regular caregiver broke her foot.

That’s when the two – along with another friend, Jacob Newcomb – hatched the idea to create a more reliable, student-run business to help their disabled classmates, while also providing a way for reliable college students to earn extra money.

According to the Press-Citizen:

Called Students Care, the idea is to use Medicaid waiver funds — which they hope to one day supplement with grant funding and other fundraisers — to pay students who perform home care in a more reliable and more personable way.

The startup is very much in the early stages. It is a registered nonprofit, with 12 employees, which they pay from $8.50 to $11 per hour. Other than Penniman, who himself is involved in the startup’s operation, they have one other client, a student at Kirkwood Community College.

Penniman, now a 25-year-old junior, trains new employees on how to meet clients’ needs, while Easler focuses on maintaining a high quality of care as they grow the business.

“That was the biggest thing for me for a while. Every day, I would ask, ‘How is this year compared to last year?’” Easler told the AP. “Because I don’t want to build something up if it’s not exceeding expectations.”

Newcomb said the concept of students helping students works well because it means help is always nearby, and the connections encourage disabled students to get more involved with UI’s activities and clubs.

In the book, The Death of Character, sociologist James Davison Hunter has highlighted research that shows that peer-to-peer service heightens the self-esteem among participants.  Not only is the founder of Students Care a person with disabilities, he has found ways to deliver his service in ways that show respect and establish new relationships.

“For college kids who aren’t disabled, its super easy to get involved in things,” he said. “We don’t want there to be any barriers for students with disabilities to go to a four-year university where they can enjoy it the whole time they are here.”

Teachers and principals interested in strengthening character formation in their school may find information and strategies at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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