Month: October 2018

Anti-bullying experts credit NJ anti-bullying laws for creating safer schools

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In New Jersey, school anti-bullying coordinators are crediting one of the nation’s oldest anti-bullying laws with helping to keep classrooms safe.

New Jersey passed its first anti-bullying law in 2002 requiring schools to offer anonymous reporting and conduct investigations into complaints. Lawmakers followed up nine years later with an expansion known as the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, which better defined bullying and mandated anti-bullying coordinators at every school, as well as specific timelines and procedures for investigating incidents, the Burlington County Times reports.

Anti-bullying coordinators said the laws provided schools with a blueprint for identifying and responding to both bullies and victims, along with training to help students develop kindness and civic responsibility.

“I think the New Jersey anti-bullying bill of rights does a great job encompassing every area,” Pemberton Township coordinator Rita Jenkins told the news site. “I say we’re fortunate with the big plug with character education. We’re very conscientious to make sure that we’re teaching these responsibilities, and ultimately that will help with the bullying situation.”

And that’s important because according to the data, bullying is a major contributor to school violence overall.

The Times reports:

The FBI’s 2017 guidelines for violence prevention in schools said bullying is often a precursor to school violence, and in 71 percent of instances of targeted school violence, the most common motive among perpetrators was ‘revenge’ for bullying.

New Jersey’s anti-bullying laws put schools, parents, lawmakers, counselors and others involved with students on the same page, while offering opportunities to build relationships.

Pemberton Child Study Team Supervisor Holly Corsanico said stronger relationships between students and adults in schools, in particular, helps to both identify troubled students and prevent them from doing something they might regret.

“I think that’s one of these stemming things with these cases that have occurred is, did they have – could we have prevented it by having connections and having an outlet and someone to speak with?” Corsanico said. “Because you’re really not going to hurt someone if you have a relationship with them, or you’re less likely to hurt anyone if you have some type of bond or connection with them.”

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, highlighted the critical importance of presenting a unified message to students on issues involving character and moral values in his book “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America”:

Moral education can work where the community, and schools and other institutions within it, share a moral culture that is integrated and mutually reinforcing; where the social networks of adult authority are strong, unified, and consistent in articulating moral ideals and their attending virtues; and where adults maintain a ‘caring watchfulness’ over all aspects of a young person’s maturation.

Teachers and parents interested in character education can look to the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues for lessons and resources on a variety of topics. Lessons like “The Virtue of Friendliness and Civility” encourage students to consider the perspective of Aristotle in exploring the impact of their actions on themselves and others.

Thrive charter schools’ unique approach is inspiring students, fueling explosive growth

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San Diego’s Thrive charter school network is growing exponentially, from a single location with a class of 45 in 2014 to nearly 700 kids spread across four campuses this school year.

Its rapid expansion comes amid tensions between charter and traditional public schools in the district, but it’s driven by a different kind of educational model that stresses character and a project-based approach to learning that parents can appreciate, according to LA School Report.

“If a hospital were run the way we run schools, it would be like, ‘Welcome to the hospital! It’s MRI day. I know you’ve got a heart murmur, but no problem! We’ll give you a brain scan,” Thrive founder and CEO Nicole Assisi told the education site.

“I feel like that’s how we operate schools: You’ve got a kid with a broken leg, you give him some antibiotics – when in reality, it’s about precision teaching and learning.”

At Thrive campuses – which are adorned with portraits of world leaders and student artwork – each student receives a personal lesson plan to identify strengths and weaknesses, and they work with school counselors to draft a road map to achieve their goals.

Classes are comprised of students in “core groups” based on development, rather than grade levels based strictly by age, and lessons incorporate subjects of math, science, public speaking, character and others into projects that benefit the school, as well as people in the community and beyond.

One recent project, “The Light of Kindness,” involved students engineering, designing and crafting DYI lanterns with LED lights they later donated to Syrian refugees resettled in San Diego. Other projects involved creating their own books, and flying a swarm of drones over their school.

The approach is part of Thrive’s three-part educational model, “which pushes students to learn to learn (using evidence-based instruction to build academic skills), learn to do (developing the skills of collaboration and problem solving through hands-on project), and learn to be (cultivating a sense of citizenship and social action in wider communities),” according to LA School Report.

Olivia told the site the small group setup in her math class has made a major difference in her academics since she transferred to Thrive.

“At my (old) school, we just worked on our own papers. It was just, ‘Here’s the paper, just work alone, stay focused.’ You’d get no help or anything,” she said. “I was behind in math, and my mom thought of Thrive. Here, we work in groups, and our teachers helps us with math. We get to communicate with different people.

“I’ve been getting really good in math, and I’m already getting catched up to third-grade math,” she said.

Other students like Russel discussed how working together to create and complete school projects is building a confidence he’ll need later in life.

“You know how one of the biggest fears in the world is going up and talking to a big crowd of people? That’s what we do on our exhibitions. Parents come up and you have to explain your project,” he said. “And we kind of get used to that, so when we get older, we can just talk about what our new invention is.”

Much of Thrive’s success stems largely from a deep understanding of how students learn, and applying lessons that fit with their strengths and weaknesses.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture, noted in his book “The Death of Character” that “psychology is in a position to specify the conditions that permit or impede the full realization of a person’s natural creativity, productivity, and well-being.”

The rapid growth in popularity of Thrive schools makes it clear parents flock to schools that get it right.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues offers resources for parents and educators looking to help youngsters work through their emotions to realize their full potential.

In the Centre’s “Tools of Virtue” lesson, for example, students learn about identifying their emotions, and how they impact decision making in different types of situations.

TN schools stress importance of ‘upstanders,’ reporting tools in fight against bullying

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Tennessee teen Cicela Hernandez has been on both sides of bullying.

After relentless teasing about the way she dressed, hair on her leg, and her family’s financials, Hernandez turned the tables to torment other students to vent her frustrations. She eventually began to lash out in class, and to harm herself in a destructive cycle that also involved sexual abuse in a home she shared with her mother and another family member.

It wasn’t until a sixth-grade teacher stopped to talk to Hernandez about her troubles that she started on a path to recovery that ultimately led to graduation and a scholarship to attend college.

“I really couldn’t control much of the anger I felt inside,” Hernandez told The Tennessean. “He was the first person to ask me, ‘What’s wrong?’”

Hernandez’s story could have ended much differently, and it illustrates the critical role “upstanders” play in the lives of the roughly 21 percent of teenage students who experience bullying in U.S. schools each year, according to the news site.

“If they don’t know how to access help or they feel like nobody cares about them, that’s the worst-case scenario,” said Lauren Dickson, a social worker for STARS, a Nashville nonprofit focused on bullying, substance abuse and violence among youth. “In those situations, problems just get bigger. They can fester.”

Brought to their ultimate conclusion, they can also lead to the types of disgruntled student shootings plaguing schools across the country. And preventing a tragic outcome often rests on the adults in students’ lives, and resources available to help.

Numerous hotlines, available both in person and through text, offer counseling, from the Tennessee statewide crisis line, to the National Suicide Prevention, to the National Sexual Assault Hotline. Schools in Tennessee and numerous other states are also working with anti-bullying apps for smartphones to streamline the reporting process.

But Rodger Dinwiddle, CEO of STARS, contends it’s the adults in students’ lives that can make the biggest difference.

“Dinwiddle talks about the ‘web of five’ confidants for kids,” The Tennessean reports. “This is a group of at least five adults – a teacher, a counselor, a coach, someone in a faith community, an aunt, a grandparent, a mentor – whom a child trusts enough to talk to about any issues they may face at home and school.”

“It’s really important for kids to feel safe with somebody in that school building that they can report to,” he said. “So that if anything happens to them, there is someone there to catch them.”

Dinwiddle explained it’s about developing habits of looking for signs of trouble to intervene before it’s too late. It’s about creating upstanders – rather than bystanders – to bullying and other issues through a new tradition of kindness and compassion.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture, pointed to the importance of establishing those habits and traditions to prompt people to take action when the time is right.

“What empathy we feel may help us understand someone else’s needs, and even feel the desire to help that person,” Hunter wrote in “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America.” “But without embedded habits and moral traditions, empathy does not tell us what to do, nor when, nor how.”

In Tennessee, more than 180 schools have signed up with the anonymous reporting app STOPit to allow students to share their concerns about bullying classmates or other dangers.

“Students are digital natives and many choose to communicate, first, through digital means rather than face-to-face conversations,” Robb Killen, Maury County Public Schools’ supervisor of counseling, said on the STOPit website. “This program meets them where they are … they can, more easily, stand up for each other and create a culture of safety, caring, and respect.”

SC schools improve behavior issues through ‘Leader in Me’ character education

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The Sumpter School District is working to create a culture shift at five South Carolina elementary schools through a “Leader in Me” character education curriculum based on “The Seven Habits of Happy Kids.”

“The Seven Habits of Happy Kids” is a book by Sean Covey, son of best-selling author Stephen Covey, who is known internationally for his work “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” The Leader in Me curriculum encourages kids to create habits to “Be Proactive,” “Begin with the End in Mind,” “Put First Things First” and “Think Win-Win,” among others, the Sumter Item reports.

In Sumter schools, administrators and teachers are working to incorporate the concepts into all aspects of school life with the help of designated Student Leaders. Each month, participating schools select Student Leaders of the Month from each classroom, as well as a Teacher Leader of the Month from each school, and celebrate the recognition during a special awards breakfast with parents.

The new approach has created “a huge climate change in the school among both students and teachers,” Shaw Heights Elementary School principal Melissa Morris told the news site.

Morris said teachers focus on a fresh aspect of the habits for healthy kids each week, and she’s witnessed a decrease in behavior problems compared to previous years, something she attributes to Leader in Me’s focus on deeper concepts that are often overlooked by other character education programs.

“In Think Win-Win, students not only celebrate their successes, but also celebrate others’ success, accordingly, as well,” Morris said. “The program is helping throughout the building. Previous methods never caused a cultural shift for the whole school. We’re creating responsible, respectful, life-long learners.”

Students and parents seem to agree.

Clyde and Tiffany Rankins both took time off work in the U.S. Air Force to attend a recent breakfast at Shaw Heights, where their third-grade son Kayleb was selected as classroom Student Leader of the Month.

“We’re super proud of him,” Tiffany Rankins told the Item. “We’re proud to see him be a leader among his peers. I think it’s a great initiative.”

The successful program reflects the strong ties between Sumter schools and parents, and the shared vision of creating well-balanced students of good character

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in his book “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America”:

Morality is a vision of moral goods shared by a community; the attitudes, aspirations, sensibilities, and dispositions that define its highest aspirations for itself, and how those moral goods find expression in every situation in daily life.

The Leader in Me website offers a variety of ways to take action, whether it’s through education, advocacy, parenting or sponsorship. The site also provides links to events, funding, resources, news, speakers, books, and blogs to guide people through the school transformation process.

Las Vegas students focus on kindness, respect on anniversary of deadly shooting

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On the one-year anniversary of a deadly shooting in Las Vegas, students in the Clark County School District are spending the week focused on kindness and respect.

Students at Paul E. Culley Elementary School spent October 1 singing Dianna Ross’ “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and talking about respect and empathy during an event in the school garden, where officials also released doves in honor of the 58 people killed by a gunman at a downtown music festival last year, KLAS reports.

The effort is part of Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval’s statewide “Week of Respect” from Sept. 28 through Oct. 2 to raise awareness about bullying in schools, and what students can do to stop it.

“It’s important that we’re all calibrated that we’re all sharing the same message that bullying is not ok at any level,” Charles Sebeck, with Clark County School District’s equity and diversity department, told the television station.

Officials are getting that message across through both school activities and a focused social media campaign with local sports starts, student groups, and others that encourages students to “Be an Upstander.”

“We’ve always engaged the community, but this is the first year we’re using social media as a platform to really … customize our message for different stakeholders,” Sebeck said.

The approach seems to be having a strong impact.

“Being kind means showing integrity, showing empathy,” Culley fifth-grader Veronica Giron told KLAS.

“I stand up for other people; for example, when I feel they’re getting bullied or people are teasing them, I stand up and tell them to not do that,” classmate Amy Martin said, adding that she enjoyed helping to hang more than 1,000 folded cranes in the garden as a “symbol of peace.”

“I was helping with the cranes, and I was helping the teacher doing the cranes and putting the beads on,” she said.

Nevada’s Week of Respect is focused on helping students develop a moral compass through practice and positive role models, both components of effective character education.

“(W)e must acquire a moral sensibility – we learn what is right and wrong, good and bad, what is to be taken seriously, ignored, or rejected as abhorrent – and we learn, in moments of uncertainty, how to apply our moral imagination to different circumstances,” sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in “The Death of Character.”

“Over time, we acquire a sense of obligation and the discipline to follow them.”

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds offers a free mindfulness-based kindness curriculum for parents and educators looking to reach youngsters with deeper messages about character.

“Scientists and experts who worked on this curriculum continue to expand the research, which not only includes efforts to replicate our research findings but also to spread them far and wide,” according to the Healthy Minds website. “For example, we had the unique honor of sharing insights from studying the kindness curriculum with Sesame Street Workshop to help shape their spring 2017 season on ‘kindness.’”

‘Start With Hello’: Sandy Hook Promise teaches kids to connect with kindness

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Students across America are learning to relate to their classmates on a more personal level, including those with whom they traditionally wouldn’t associate.

Students at Tuslaw Elementary and Middle schools in Stark County, Ohio, spent a week in early October wearing name tags, writing positive notes for others, and eating lunch with kids they’d normally avoid, IndeOnline reports.

The theme was simple: Start With Hello.

“This week is allowing our students to realize they are not alone,” counselor Chelsy Jackson said. “They have people they can reach out to whether it’s their peers or teachers.”

The activities are part of the Fourth Annual Start With Hello Call-To-Action Week organized by Sandy Hook Promise, a national nonprofit that “trains students and adults to know the signs of gun violence so that no other parent experiences the senseless, horrific loss of their child.”

The organization was founded by family of the 26 students and staff of Sandy Hook Elementary who were murdered by a gunman on December 14, 2012.

“The Sandy Hook Promise wants to get students connected and make sure they are not feeling alone,” Jackson said.

Stark County schools, including Tuslaw, Fairless and Perry school districts, joined more than 12,000 schools across the country taking part in 2018. Down the road from Tuslaw, Fairless Middle School students held discussions about isolation, and brainstormed ways to reach out. They also donned name tags and dressed up as their favorite characters throughout the week to help spark conversations, according to the news site.

“It raised a lot of awareness,” Fairless counselor LuAnne Frase said. “It got our students thinking and mingling with other students and out of their comfort group.”

And it’s clear the positive messages are sinking in.

“People care about you, someone cares,” Taylin Saunders, a Tuslaw eighth-grader, said of lessons learned.

“You get to know a lot of people that you might have judged (before),” seventh-grader Logan Hornberger added. “People judge me as being weak but if they got to know me they would find that I can do more than they think.”

The efforts to instill more kindness and compassion in students comports with findings from the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture’s “Culture of American Families” report, which documented parents’ explicit commitment to moral character.

“The overwhelming majority of American parents (96 percent) say ‘strong moral character’ is very important, if not essential to their child’s future,” according to the publication.

The nonprofit Kindness.org offers a lot of ideas for educators and others to promote kindness, both themselves and in others. The site lists dozens of initiatives readers can join to make a difference, from “Tag someone to tell them ‘I’m here for you,’” to “Pay it forward with coffee,” to “compliment a stranger,” among many others.

Buddy Bench helps students put kindness into action at VA elementary school

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The buddy bench at Jackson-Via Elementary School in Charlottesville, Virginia is catching on.

School counselor Kristin Ullrich helped to bring the bench to one of the school’s playgrounds several years ago to provide a way for students to practice empathy, and it seems to be working, the Daily Progress reports.

“If the students are at recess and they’re sad and they feel like they need a friend, they can sit on the bench and the other students will go and include them,” Ullrich said. “It really allows them to learn practiced empathy and make new friends.”

The news site points to research from the International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education that shows buddy benches can help promote positive behaviors at school, particularly for students who struggle with their emotions and behaviors.

“The goal of the buddy bench is to change school climate by structuring part of recess to cue students to interact with and befriend students who might otherwise spend recess alone,” according to the Journal.

Jackson-Via third-grader Charlotte Dontanville said she used the bench to gain friends in kindergarten and now has many, as well as a motivation to reach out to others.

“If two people are being mean to each other, then nothing good will happen to either of them,” she said. “You want to make new friends, see what other people’s personalities are like – it’s good for you.”

The buddy bench at Jackson-Via is bright red, decorated with smiling faces, a rabbit and a beaming sun, designed to draw attention. But it’s not the only way the school is empowering students to step up to help their classmates.

The Bully Nots program designates “kindness leaders” who are tasked with teaching and demonstrating positive behaviors to younger students, through an assembly, songs and choreography.

One of this year’s leaders, Eva Reed, said she’s excited to join the Bully Nots, which combines her passions around an important message.

“I want to express myself and be kind to others and make a lot of new friends,” she said.

Both the buddy bench and the Bully Nots stem from the school’s intentional focus on the true meaning of kindness.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in his book “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America”:

It is easy to affirm a general idea of kindness, but quite another to believe that people are intrinsically worth being treated kindly, and that because of that belief, one has an obligation to actually treat them kindly.

Action for Happiness, “a movement of people committed to building a happier and more caring society,” offers suggestions to help educators create Kindness Projects in the classroom.

“Every Kindness Project starts with doing: using creative activities to explore, promote and experience caring and compassionate behavior,” according to ActionforHappiness.org. “It’s important that children learn by doing, not just by talking or thinking about kindness. This helps their ideas become real and tangible; and with repetition, it helps them to start forming new habits.”

TX teacher’s coffee cart helps special needs students build social skills

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A first-year special education teacher in Texas is getting a lot of attention for a creative idea she came up with to help students overcome their disabilities and to help them learn communication and other life skills.

Recent Texas A&M graduate Shelby Winder took a portion of her modest starting salary to buy a coffee cart for special education students in her Life Skills class at Grand Oaks High School in Spring, Texas. The idea is to allow students to run a coffee bar as a small business, which they dubbed “The Grizzly Bean,” while helping students strengthen communication and social skills, Rare reports.

Texas author and life coach Chris Field posted about Winder’s efforts on Facebook.

The coffee cart “would allow her students to walk around to each of the teachers and staff in the school and take their orders and then deliver their coffee to them on Fridays. Most importantly, this would allow the students to practice their social skills, communication, working through their shyness, and even learning how to run a simple business by calculating their expenses and profits,” Field wrote, adding that he was so impressed he helped repay the teacher for her expenses.

“Her students have now been at this a couple weeks … and she says they are absolutely loving it,” he wrote. “It’s obviously a great teaching tool and one that will give them skills and lessons to carry far beyond this school year.”

The practical life skills of counting and collecting cash are only part of a bigger message Winder is hoping to convey, according to Field.

“One of the coolest parts of this story is that Shelby has the goal of using some of the profits from her class’s coffee business to actually provide funds for another school to start the same project,” he wrote. “Then they would do the same, and they would do the same, and so on and so forth. How cool is that?!”

Winder planted a seed that’s growing into something bigger, both through new habits of communication and socialization for students and new school traditions motivated by compassion and understanding for students with special needs. Those habits and traditions are critical to effective character education.

“What empathy we feel may help us understand someone else’s needs, and even feel the desire to help that person,” James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture wrote in “The Tragedy of Moral Education.” “But without embedded habits and moral traditions, empathy does not tell us what to do, nor when nor how.”

The Ripple Kindness Project outlines many of the ways students benefit from a focus on practicing kindness in “8 Reasons For Teaching Kindness In School.”

Patty O’Grady, an expert in neuroscience, explained that “Children and adolescents do not learn kindness by only thinking about it and talking about it.

“Kindness is best learned by feeling it so that they can reproduce it,” O’Grady said. “Kindness is an emotion that students feel and empathy is a strength that they share.”

Study shows kindness activates brain differently when nothing expected in return

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A new study of brain activity shows genuine acts of kindness activate the reward network in the brain in a unique way when there’s nothing expected in return.

University of Sussex researchers examined 36 existing studies featuring brain scans of 1,150 people making kind decisions and divided the images into two groups: those with subjects acting out genuine altruism with nothing expected in return, and those motivated by strategic kindness, or something to be gained, The Week reports.

Researchers found both types of kind acts sparked activity in the brain’s reward center, though it was more obvious in participants acting out of strategic kindness.

But they also discovered something else.

“Some brain regions (in the ‘subgunual anterior cingulate cortex’) were more active during altruistic generosity indicating that there is something unique about being altruistic with no hope of gaining something in return,” according to the site.

The study’s lead author, Daniel Campbell-Meiklejohn, contends the analysis “sparks questions about people having different motivations to give to others; clear self-interest versus the warm glow of altruism.”

“The decision to share resources is a cornerstone of any cooperative society. We know that people can choose to be kind because they like feeling like they are a ‘good person,’ but also that people can choose to be kind when they think there might be something ‘in it’ for them such as a returned favor or improved reputation,” he wrote, according to PsychCentral.

“Some people might say that ‘why’ we give does not matter, as long as we do,” Campbell-Meikeljohn continued. “However, what motivates us to be kind is both fascinating and important. If, for example, governments can understand why people might give when there’s nothing in it for them, then they can understand how to encourage people to volunteer, donate to charity or support others in their community.”

The study is the latest evidence supporting truly altruistic kindness as an important component of character.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in his book “The Death of Character”:

Implicit in the world ‘character’ is a story. It is a story about living for a purpose that is greater than the self.

Campbell-Meiklejohn contends that while strategic kindness may prompt more obvious activity in the brain, there’s times when it’s no substitute for the real deal.

“For example, if after a long day of helping a friend move house, they hand you a fiver, you could end up feeling undervalued and less likely to help again,” he wrote. “A hung and kind words however might spark a warm glow and make you feel appreciated.”

The Ripple Kindness Project explains why that “warm glow” is important to conveying true kindness to students with “8 Reasons for Teaching Kindness in School.”

In the article, neuroscience expert Patty O’Grady contends “kindness changes the brain by the experience of kindness.”

“Children and adolescents do not learn kindness by only thinking about it and talking about it,” she said. “Kindness is best learned by feeling it so that they can reproduce it. Kindness is an emotion that students feel and empathy is a strength that they share.”

 

Wichita schools creates peer group for male minority students where ‘it’s cool be smart’

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The Wichita, Kansas school district is working to give its young male minority students a strong BAASE to set them up for success in college and life.

BAASE – an acronym for Better Academics and Social Excellence – is a new program aimed at rewarding black and Latino boys in the city’s 16 middle schools who are thriving in class and encouraging them to pursue bigger things, The Wichita Eagle reports.

More than 500 seventh- and eighth-graders – all with a GPA of 3.2 or better, excellent attendance and good behavior last school year – recently gathered at the district’s headquarters to eat pizza and watch an inspirational video, “Dare to Dream,” featuring icons like Martin Luther King Jr., Michael Jordan, Misty Copeland, and others, according to the news site.

“They’ve already demonstrated that they have the ability to go to college,” said William Polite, Wichita’s director of diversity. “Our goal is to bring them all together to create a positive peer group where it’s cool to be smart and it’s fun to be smart.”

The district’s executive director of secondary schools, Robert Garner, addressed the boys at the event, where he explained that a high school diploma is “the bare minimum” and encouraged students to enroll in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses.

“You are the kinds of students that we believe can be leaders,” he said. “You’re the ones that are going to make a difference in the world.”

“Our goal is that each of you will graduate and go further,” Garner said. “We’re trying to build you up – build your resume to the level where, when you graduate from high school, you will walk out the door and be ready for that college opportunity.”

The first meeting focused mostly on setting goals. The invited students also signed their name to a pledge “to enter into a brotherhood of a higher level by holding ourselves and each other accountable to the highest standard of achievement both academically and socially.”

Future meetings will include guest speakers, practice interviews, college visits and other activities focused on building the character.

“Polite said advisers at each middle school will use a free curriculum called ‘Believing the College Dream’ to guide conversations about the importance of education,” the Eagle reports. “They’ll also practice social and emotional skills and talk about important character traits such as honesty, persistence and self control.”

The Wichita district’s focus on helping students develop social emotional intelligence underscores the reality that schools are formative institutions, with a mission that extends far beyond academics.

James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson, with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, write in “The Content of Their Character”:

Human beings, after all are not merely cerebral, but sentient; not merely rational, but feeling – and beyond the intellectual and emotional, they are social and normative beings, too.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues offers resources to develop educators develop emotional intelligence and positive character virtues in students. By connecting emotions, choices, and actions, the Jubilee Centre materials push students beyond skills and toward the virtue of compassion for others.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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