gratitude

IL school’s ‘Wall of Honor’ highlights military veterans serving the community

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Officials at Danville, Illinois’ Kenneth D. Bailey Academy want students to look up to military veterans, literally.

The school is soliciting nominations of veterans who live in Vermilion County to induct into the academy’s “Wall of Honor,” an initiative launched by Principal Tracy Cherry in 2016 to recognize role models who have served both their community and their country with honor, the Commercial-News reports.

“It’s part of our mission and our vision,” Cherry said. “It’s a way to support people in our community who have given back. “We usually try to honor one to three veterans each year.”

Honored veterans were announced during an all-school assembly at Bailey Academy, and their names were included in a Salute to Veterans Concert at Danville High School, as well. School officials will hang a plaque with the honoree’s picture and information on the Wall of Honor in the school hallway, and those veterans will also receive a smaller plaque to take home, according to the news site.

The Wall of Honor sits opposite a mural of Kenneth D. Bailey, the school’s namesake and a Danville native who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism as a U.S. Marine serving in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. Bailey was gunned down during a patrol mission in 1942, though his heroics on the battlefield are well documented.

Bailey Academy students “see the veterans’ pictures and their stories on the wall as they pass by, and they know it’s something they can aspire to in their life, too,” Cherry said. “It’s important for us to recognize people in our community while they are still with us because sometimes they don’t get recognized until after it’s too late.”

The Wall of Honor nominations are open to both men and women from all branches of military service who continued to serve in their community as civilians. A committee of four community members and three Bailey Academy staff review nominations, as well as nominations from previous years, to select inductees.

“The committee enjoys the process every year,” Cherry said. “We’ve always had a decent number of applications.”

What makes this program so authentic is that it is rooted in the life of a local hero and the School’s namesake. This program further illustrates the findings of Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture researchers in the recently published book, The Content of Their Character regarding their findings about rural schools which were studied. They found that three spheres of moral obligation were characteristic of these schools. First is an appreciation of immigration; second is religious responsibility, and third is the value of military service. The study of the rural high schools showed that in these schools that the students were not pressured to join or consider the military, rather “there was simply a clear expectation that people respect and honor those serving, those who had served, and those students thinking about joining.”

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

 

Social-emotional learning and achievement at Valor

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Valor Collegiate Academies in Tennessee is crediting a sharp focus on social and emotional learning (SEL) for students’ astonishing academic success, which propelled its Tennessee schools to the top 1 percent of all middle schools in the state in its first year.

The success at Valor not only sheds light on the value of social-emotional learning, but also provides an opportunity to connect those lessons with broader discussions about good character and morals.

The Charter School Growth Fund, which invested $1.5 million for Valor’s first two schools launched in 2013, featured the schools in a recent “CSGF Portfolio Spotlight” on the organization’s website.

Todd Dickson, CEO of Valor Collegiate Academies, explained that the concept for the charter school was inspired by his work at a high-performing charter school in California that focused heavily on academics, and his twin brother Daren’s time helping children in social services with social and emotional skills.

“Students at Valor spend more time on their social and emotional growth than most traditional students. We first work on self-awareness and self-management to help them develop a strong sense of who they are. Then, we work on social awareness and social management to help them develop positive relationships with others. We believe that doing both things well helps develop healthy kids and communities,” Dickson said.

“We also hear from students that they feel safe here and that they have trusting relationships with peers and adults in the building. This has been beneficial in an academic setting; scholars are more willing to take academic risks. They listen to other people’s opinions and accept a diversity of perspectives.”

Valor schools use “The Valor Compass” to guide student growth and help them focus on four primary objectives: Sharp Minds, Noble Purpose, Big Hearts, and Aligned Actions.

“Mentor time, Expeditions, and academic courses all incorporate explicit and experiential experiences to help scholars develop sharp minds, big hearts, noble purpose, and aligned actions,” according to the Valor website. “Valor scholars develop character strengths such as kindness, determination, curiosity, gratitude, and integrity within a supportive community.”

Ryan Olson, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Culture at the University of Virginia, points out in “Character Education” that an SEL researcher argued that “the orientation of social-emotional learning toward action and skill” in SEL programs can complement the “concern for volition and intention often found in character and moral education programs.”

Adding curriculum resources on why students should do and be good—reasons outside oneself and for the benefit of others and a community—improves the stickiness of character formation, and getting students to go deeper by working on developing good sense when there is conflict between the social and emotional skills they’re learning, is an excellent next step, Olson argues.

The UK’s Jubilee Centre offers a worksheet to assist teachers to help students think about the kind of person and type of life they want to pursue.

Rocketship Academy will ‘touch your soul’ with gratitude

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Teachers and administrators at Nashville’s Rocketship United Academy want students to understand that the school’s core values are more than slogans on a poster, so they’re bringing them to life through daily rituals that “create a consistent, predictable, and positive school experience.”

Across the public charter school network, Rocketship schools share four primary values—respect, persistence, empathy, and responsibility—and each school crafts a fifth, individualized value with the help of parents and staff.

“Our core values fit within our mission to prepare our students to thrive in school and beyond by equipping them with critical character skills. Many of our students come from high-poverty communities,” 3rd-grade STEM teacher Tatum Schultz wrote recently for Rocketship.

“Research shows that children living in these communities experience more ‘toxic stress’ than children living in middle or upper class neighborhoods. Toxic stress makes it difficult for children to manage their emotions, resolve conflicts, and respond to provocations,” Schultz wrote. “That is why we create a consistent, predictable, and positive school experience that helps our students develop the social-emotional skills they need to succeed in the classroom and beyond.”

That development occurs in morning “community meetings” with students three times a week to focus on a character education curriculum tailored to upper- and lower-grade students. The program uses five characters with different temperaments and personalities to illustrate important concepts in ways young students can duly relate.

The approach is “designed to give students depersonalized opportunities to practice the skills to recognize their emotions, demonstrate care for others, establish positive relationships, make responsible decisions, and handle challenging situations,” Schultz wrote.

In upper grades, students learn to track their behaviors, feelings, and progress with a mood journal.

At Schultz’s school, parents, administrators, and others selected gratitude for the school’s fifth core value, and educators have incorporated exercises that transformed the concept from a word into “a feeling that will touch your soul when you walk through the front doors,” Schultz wrote.

One example, developed by Rocketship’s Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support team, is Gratitude Grams that allow students to express thanks and appreciation and show kindness to others in their own individual way.

“Every day, for seven days, students were given a half sheet of colored paper with a different student’s name on it,” Schultz explained. “Their responsibility was to watch gratitude spread. They had to write one sentence thanking that student for something they had done or they could capture appreciation for them as a peer.

“At the end of seven days, the students would receive their own name and could read what seven other students appreciated about them.”

Rocketship demonstrates what James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson call “intentional” schools in The Content of Their Character, a summary of field research in school culture and character formation from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

In “intentional” schools, according to editors Hunter and Olson:

The moral and missional ethos of a school was reinforced through a range of practices, or routinized actions—some formal, some informal—all oriented toward giving tangible expressions to the school’s values and beliefs. These included school mottoes, honor codes, school assemblies, mission statements, dress codes, statues, stories, student handbooks and contracts outlining behavioral expectations, and the like . . . All of it bears on the likelihood children will ‘catch’ character.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues offers a model of virtue formation that can help educators ensure that the tenets of strong character are not only taught, but caught by students, as well as have a positive impact on students’ home life.

How to teach gratitude through journaling

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A Syracuse, NY, middle school is helping to focus students on the things that truly matter.

“Having a bed to sleep in,” wrote Lincoln Middle School 7th-grader Jesse Swank in his school-provided gratitude journal.

“Having my glasses,” another entry read.

Swank is among about 500 Lincoln students who received the specially bound gratitude journals in October after a chance encounter by principal LaJuan White sparked a community-wide fundraising campaign to make it happen, Syracuse.com reports.

The idea came last summer after White had a long night helping a student and stopped in to the local Original Grain for a breakfast smoothie. While there, she noticed a “gratitude journal” on display at the downtown restaurant that encouraged customers to take a moment to chronicle what they are grateful for.

White jotted down a note and it lifted her spirits, so she tasked English teacher Marleah Tkacz with tracking down the makers of the journal, Grateful Peoples, to bring the concept to Lincoln classrooms.

Tkacz contacted Grateful Peoples founder Teddy Droseros, and he offered to sell the school journals at roughly half price—$8.00 each. White, Tkacz, and others at Lincoln then launched a fundraising drive to get journals into the hands of every student, and Original Grain was among the first to help out.

The restaurant concocted a special “gratitude smoothie” with proceeds to help the cause, and other businesses in the area quickly followed suit.

“It sounded really cool to me,” said Eric Hinman, one of Original Grain’s owners.

Urban Life held a charity spin class, and O Yoga hosted a yoga class for employees of the local marketing firm Terakeet, which raised $350. Hinman also contacted Paul Messina, owner of Apizza Regionale, to expand on the fundraising.

Messina brought several Lincoln students to his restaurant to create special “gratitude pies” that also raised $1,300 toward the project. Others from the Lincoln school neighborhood donated money as well, including one unnamed woman who dropped off a $500 check.

“It just speaks to the whole idea of gratitude,” White told Syracuse.com. “It took on a life of its own.”

Within weeks the community raised about $5,000, and Droseros rented a car, loaded it with 550 journals, and delivered them from New York City to the upstate school in person.

“It was one of the best experiences of my life,” he said. “I’m really inspired by the people in Syracuse.”

“It was really a community effort,” Droseros said.

Each gratitude journal, White said, belongs to a specific student.

“It has your name on it,” White said. “It’s very personal.”

Droseros said he created the gratitude journals and put them in public places about a year ago to encourage people to give thanks. The effort eventually turned into a nonprofit, one he hopes will now involve more collaboration with schools.

Lincoln students told Syracuse.com mornings have evolved from a hectic ordeal last school year into several minutes of quiet time to reflect on what’s most important.

“This year,” Swank, the 7th-grader, said, “it’s more peaceful and calm.”

The daily reflection is critically important because it helps students to focus their attention on gratitude, a virtue that “has enormous moral significance,” according to philosopher Laurence Thomas.

Thomas explained in The Hedgehog Review, a publication of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, that it’s through gratitude that humans acknowledge the significance of each other to form basic social connections.

“When a person acts in good will towards another, then she or he is acknowledging that the other has moral value,” he wrote. “Gratitude is a natural response to being so treated.”

Educators and parents can begin engaging students in cultivating appreciation and gratitude with a curriculum guide from the Jubilee Centre at the University of Birmingham.

Research: Children grow up “happier” if they are grateful

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A growing body of research shows that teaching children true gratitude can have beneficial health effects, while also leading to stronger relationships with others.

While parents have long pressed their children to say “thank you” as a sign of good manners, researchers contend that when kids show gratitude and actually mean it, the practice can lower stress, battle depression, improve impulse control, and lead to a more optimistic and positive outlook, Business Insider reports.

“Research by Sara Algoe, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina, explains one of the most significant keys to well-being is being able to acquire and maintain relationships. Gratitude is the glue that can bring people together as well as creating happiness from the inside out,” according to the news site.

“In her study, she calls it, ‘Find, Remind and Bind,’ citing the process of being sincere in thanks, and then getting a positive response in return, creates a stronger relationship bond with lasting side effects.”

Other research shows the benefits are both physical and mental, and include reduced depression, better impulse control for things like spending, eating, and drinking; a more optimistic and positive outlook; a stronger immune system; lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol; and lower blood pressure.

“. . . Researchers at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities conducted a study focused solely on gratitude interventions in treating depression and found that practices such as keeping a gratitude journal, writing a letter of gratitude, counting blessings and gratitude visits all had a powerful effect, with journals being the most effective,” Business Insider reports.

The benefits of gratitude, however, rely on sincerity.

Researchers with UNC, Duke, and NC State pointed out that children as young as six years old know the difference between genuine gratitude, and simply saying “thank you.”

“Many of the children we talked to had a lovely phrase for telling the difference between the two,” the North Carolina psychologists wrote. “They’d say: ‘She said thank you, but she didn’t mean it.’ So even at that age they are getting it—but they lack the perspective, the experience of it.”

Business Insider offered several ways parents can help youngsters develop the habit of sincere gratitude to propel them toward a happy and healthy life.

The news site suggests parents and other adults model the behavior they want kids to display, with a focus on presenting an example of sincere gratitude. Adults can also talk with children about the concept of gratitude, and explain how developing the skill within themselves can positively impact health and happiness.

Children can also develop true gratitude when the adults in their lives encourage volunteer work or other activities that illustrate why they should be grateful, such as working in a soup kitchen or helping needy families.

The research outlined by Business Insider affirms the benefits of gratitude cited by Robert H. Frank in The Hedgehog Review, a publication of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

Frank notes there is a “large body of research by academic psychologists who have studied how the emotion of gratitude affects people’s behavior.

“The general finding is that gratitude makes people not only happier and healthier but also more generous toward others,” he wrote in “Just Desserts: Why We Tend to Exaggerate Merit—and Pay for Doing So.”

Frank also pointed to evidence that people who believe gratitude is not entirely their own making are often more grateful, and more likely to show their appreciation.

“Subjects who’d been asked to recall a good event and come up with external causes—many of whom mentioned luck explicitly, or cited factors like supportive spouses, thoughtful teachers, and financial aid—gave more than 25 percent larger donations than those who’d been asked to offer internal causes to explain the good event,” Frank wrote.

Kids experience football and generosity from fans who donated tickets

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Students at South Knoxville Elementary School received a lesson in gratitude this month, courtesy of hundreds of University of Tennessee fans from across the country.

“Thank you for giving us the tickets. I went to the game Saturday. I liked it a lot,” second-grader Catherine Luster wrote in a thank you note. “On Saturday you did really, really good on the Homecoming game.”

Students from South Knoxville and nearby South Doyle Middle School trekked to Neyland Stadium in early November after a social media campaign called #EmptyNeyland encouraged ticketholders to boycott the Volunteers and pressure the school into firing coach Butch Jones, WBIR reports.

The boycott convinced hundreds of people from across the country to donate more than 300 football tickets to send students to the game in their place, and the kids spent their first day back at school penning thank you notes to each one of them.

“Dear UT fans, thank you for donating tickets to us,” second-grader Zachary Householder wrote. “My favorite part of the game was the dog because it was cute. The Vols scored a touchdown. It was 24-10. Vols got 24 and South Miss got 10.”

WBIR reports the young students hummed UT’s unofficial fight song, “Rocky Top,” throughout the day, sporadically singing the chorus together.

“Thank you for donating tickets to us,” Zachary’s twin brother Riley wrote. “This is my first . . . ever game and it is a game I will never forget.”

The donated tickets not only offered many students their first experience inside a college football stadium, but could also impact how the students treat others.

Robert H. Frank noted in the The Hedgehog Review, a publication of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, that there is a “large body of research by academic psychologists who have studied how the emotion of gratitude affects people’s behavior.

“The general finding is that gratitude makes people not only happier and healthier, but also more generous toward others,” he wrote.

Frank also pointed out that those who believe their good fortune is not entirely of their own making tend to be more grateful than others.

“Subjects who’d been asked to recall a good event and come up with external causes—many of whom mentioned luck explicitly, or cited factors like supportive spouses, thoughtful teachers, and financial aid—gave more than 25 percent larger donations than those who’d been asked to offer internal causes to explain the good event,” Frank wrote.

The Jubilee Centre offers lessons educators can use to build a similar sense of gratitude in their classrooms.

One lesson, “Build Your Own Virtue: Gratitude,” helps students “to think through what, when and how to practice the virtue of gratitude.”

NY elementary students thank veterans for service

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Teachers at Olean City Schools in New York want to instill good character in students, so they invited local veterans in to area schools to show their appreciation, and model the proper way to give thanks to those who fought for freedom.

“I think the word hopefully everybody took away is not only thankfulness, but pride,” East View Elementary School Principal Brian Crawford told the Olean Times Herald. “Pride in your country, pride for your service, but also pride in your school.”

Second grade teachers at East View organized an assembly shortly before Veterans Day to cap off a week-long show of appreciation for military veterans that also included hallway decorating and letters sent to VA hospitals.

The school holds monthly assemblies as part of the district’s character education program with a focus on a different virtue each month. For November, the theme is gratitude.

“It goes well with Thanksgiving at the end of the month, and with Veterans Day also being in November, the second-grade (teachers) really wanted to tie the two together,” Crawford told the news site. “They deserve all the credit because they planned a very heartfelt and meaningful assembly.”

At East View, teacher Brian Martin and volunteer Harold Linza invited local veterans to speak with students, who learned how to offer thanks with a firm handshake and a gift of cookies. U.S. Army Sgt. Geoffrey Thomas was among those who attended, and the experience at East View was rewarding in more ways than one.

“It was nice to see they did this segment on veterans and military personnel, and I was glad I as able to come in and be a part of it,” Thomas said, adding that his two children, third grader Rian and pre-kindergartner Olyvia, attend the school.

“With me being in the Army, when Rian gets to do things like this, I’m not always around,” he said. “So being able to be here and be around and a part of it was a lot of fun and good for him.”

At Washington West Elementary School, first graders shared a similar experience with World War II veteran Edward Mohr, uncle of the school’s library aide Rose Herenda. Mohr, 95, was drafted as a 20-year-old working with the Civilian Conservation Corps and rose to the rank of sergeant in the U.S. Army, the Times Herald reports.

Washington West students prodded Mohr with questions about his time in the service and examined his many service medals, which include the Good Conduct Medal, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Philippine Liberation Medal, and the New York Medal for Merit.

Students wanted to know why he joined the military.

“They sent you a letter,” he explained. “It said, ‘Greetings, we want you in the service,’ and that’s where you went.”

“The little kids were great,” Mohr told the Times Herald. “They had some good questions.”

Intergenerational gratitude is an especially powerful way to build community bonds.

University of Virginia sociologist James Hunter writes in The Tragedy of Moral Education in America:

A morality conceptualized without basic links to a living creed and a lived community means that the espoused morality entails few if any psychic costs; it lacks, in any case, the social and spiritual sanctions that can make morality binding on our conscience and behavior.

By strengthening ties to the past through gratitude for military veterans, East View teachers and officials are binding students’ morality to a shared, lived community that clearly values the virtues of good character, while also honoring the sacrifices that paid for their freedoms.

One school’s gift to another lifts spirits after Hurricane Irma

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Students at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Clifton, NJ, are learning what it’s like to help others in need, a lesson on character catalyzed by a connection with a Florida school ravaged by Hurricane Irma.

Veteran Wilson teacher Fran Chiarelli learned about the plight of Pinecrest Elementary School in Immokalee, Fla. through Cindy Reinhardt Gerber, a Pinecrest teacher who worked with Chiarelli at a school in Clifton years ago, NorthJersey.com reports.

In early September, Hurricane Irma ravaged the Immokalee community, where 99 percent of the mostly migrant community lives in extreme poverty. The storm decimated trailers and wiped out the local tomato crop families in the area rely on to survive.

Pinecrest lost supplies, and local families lost their homes, clothes, and jobs in the storm.

Chiarelli relayed the situation to Woodrow Wilson Principal Maria Romeo, and the two organized a two-week fundraising drive that involved the entire school community, which also includes a high percentage of low income students.

“Even though we have many disadvantaged children right here in Clifton, they were able to give of themselves and realize the importance of helping other people,” Chiarelli told North Jersey.

Romeo said the experience is tied in with the district’s focus on character education by giving students the opportunity to learn empathy.

“A disadvantaged student here may live in an apartment with a roof over their heads,” she said, while kids in Immokalee are struggling with life in “the hull of a trailer.”

“It was a good opportunity for them to understand poverty on a completely different level,” Romeo said.

Woodrow Wilson students, parents and staff, baked and sold their goods, while students also raised money through class “penny wars”—a competition to collect the most change. After two weeks, the school raised nearly $10,000 to help Pinecrest buy cots for the community, bags of food for families, and other essentials.

Pinecrest Principal Susan Jordan told North Jersey the donation was by far the biggest the community received in the wake of Hurricane Irma, though other local communities also contributed to Immokalee’s recovery.

“It gives us a level of comfort so we can do what we want to do and what we need to do and know it will actually happen,” Jordan said.

That type of gratitude is what philosopher Laurence M. Thomas describes as “the most basic sentiment of interpersonal interaction.”

“There is no greater sign a people are socially invisible than that they not be seen as meriting gratitude for the good that they do on behalf of others,” Thomas wrote in The Hedgehog Review, a publication of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. “When a person acts with good will towards another, then she or he is acknowledging that the other has moral value. Gratitude is a natural response to being so treated.”

The gracious donation from Woodrow Wilson students also belies concerns about America’s focus on materialism that dates back to observations by French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville in 1833.

Tocqueville worried that “America was devolving into a nation of self-sufficient Robinson Crusoes,” researchers Arlie Hoschild and Sarah Garrett wrote in The Hedgehog Review. “If we are too individualistic, if we devalue moral sentiments, Tocqueville thought, our attention will then turn to materialism. Speaking of Americans in 1833, he observed that the individual arising from their relative equality ‘lays open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification.’”

Tocqueville was concerned that Americans would become obsessed with the material, and focus less on virtues like gratitude and empathy that strengthen communities.

The Florida donation proves students in New Jersey understand gratitude and generosity, but it also goes beyond that to help to build up both communities through service to others.

Resources on helping others, like “How Would You Help?” from the Jubilee Centre, can help students understand ways they can give back to their communities.

Library reaches out with gratitude tree

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The Healdsburg Regional Library is offering students a unique way to show their gratitude, and it couldn’t come at a more opportune time.

Wildfires that raged through Sonoma County and Napa Valley, Calif. in October left many in the area scrambling for safety as flames devoured their homes and belongings, but the library’s new Gratitude Tree is helping some to cope with the destruction, The Healdsburg Tribune reports.

Many Healdsburg residents were lucky enough to avoid the fires, Healdsburg librarian Charity Anderson said, but children in local schools haven’t escaped the reality that’s left friends and families in dire straits.

“The tree is exactly what it sounds like,” Anderson told the news site. “It invites people in the community to say what they’re grateful for and creates a beautiful art piece.”

“This is a good way for children to say what they’re grateful for, which is really important after the fires,” she said.

The idea for the Gratitude Tree started this summer, well before several fires scorched nearly 200,000 acres, consuming roughly 8,400 structures and killing dozens of people. Four children’s librarians from around the county came up with the low commitment idea to engage children for Gratitude Month in November using a tree, with paper leaves kids can use to write what they’re thankful for and hang from its branches.

At the Healdsburg library, officials unveiled the tree, which sits near the children’s area earlier this month, and it’s already filling in with leaves expressing thanks “for the first responders of Sonoma County,” “friends and family,” and other hopeful messages.

The Tribune notes that the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) emphasizes how wildfires often leave children with fear, worry, distress, and anxiety. The damage, both physical and emotional, stems from concerns about loved ones, separation from their families, and can lead to behavior problems, as well as problems sleeping or eating.

“Even in the most difficult situations, it is important to identify some positive aspect and to stay hopeful for the future,” the NCTSN advises. “A positive and optimistic outlook helps children see the good things in the world around them. This outlook can be one way to help them through even the most challenging times.”

Robert H. Frank also observed the intersection of gratitude and behavior in The Hedgehog Review, a publication of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

Frank pointed to the “large body of research by academic psychologists who have studied how the emotion of gratitude affects people’s behavior.”

“The general finding is that gratitude makes people not only happier and healthier, but also more generous toward others,” he wrote.

In other words, gratitude is infectious, particularly in folks who acknowledge that their good fortune isn’t entirely their own making.

“Interesting enough, gratitude is often stronger in people who believe that they have been lucky rather than in those who believe that success is solely due to their own efforts,” Frank wrote. “Subjects who’d been asked to recall a good event and come up with external causes—many of whom mentioned luck explicitly, or cited factors like supportive spouses, thoughtful teachers, and financial aid—gave more than 25 percent larger donations than those who’d been asked to offer internal causes to explain the good event.”

The fires in California have undoubtedly left many in the Napa Valley region grateful to be alive, and many surely recognize that prevailing winds, an act of God, or some form of luck played a role.

The Healdsburg Gratitude Tree provides an opportunity for local students to reflect on that reality, and share their gratitude for avoiding the terrible fate that befell their neighbors.

Anderson told the Tribune that’s something worth celebrating, and she now plans to keep the Gratitude Tree up through the end of the year to continue to spread the message of hope.

“Maybe we’ll even put Christmas lights on it,” she said.

Lessons from the Jubilee Centre can help students practice the virtue of gratitude in the classroom.

Social-emotional learning and achievement at Valor

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Valor Collegiate Academies in Tennessee is crediting a sharp focus on social and emotional learning (SEL) for students’ astonishing academic success, which propelled its Tennessee schools to the top 1 percent of all middle schools in the state in its first year.

The success at Valor not only sheds light on the value of social-emotional learning, but also provides an opportunity to connect those lessons with broader discussions about good character and morals.

The Charter School Growth Fund, which invested $1.5 million for Valor’s first two schools launched in 2013, featured the schools in a recent “CSGF Portfolio Spotlight” on the organization’s website.

Todd Dickson, CEO of Valor Collegiate Academies, explained that the concept for the charter school was inspired by his work at a high-performing charter school in California that focused heavily on academics, and his twin brother Daren’s time helping children in social services with social and emotional skills.

“Students at Valor spend more time on their social and emotional growth than most traditional students. We first work on self-awareness and self-management to help them develop a strong sense of who they are. Then, we work on social awareness and social management to help them develop positive relationships with others. We believe that doing both things well helps develop healthy kids and communities,” Dickson said.

“We also hear from students that they feel safe here and that they have trusting relationships with peers and adults in the building. This has been beneficial in an academic setting; scholars are more willing to take academic risks. They listen to other people’s opinions and accept a diversity of perspectives.”

Valor schools use “The Valor Compass” to guide student growth and help them focus on four primary objectives: Sharp Minds, Noble Purpose, Big Hearts, and Aligned Actions.

“Mentor time, Expeditions, and academic courses all incorporate explicit and experiential experiences to help scholars develop sharp minds, big hearts, noble purpose, and aligned actions,” according to the Valor website. “Valor scholars develop character strengths such as kindness, determination, curiosity, gratitude, and integrity within a supportive community.”

Ryan Olson, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Culture at the University of Virginia, points out in “Character Education” that an SEL researcher argued that “the orientation of social-emotional learning toward action and skill” in SEL programs can complement the “concern for volition and intention often found in character and moral education programs.”

Adding curriculum resources on why students should do and be good—reasons outside oneself and for the benefit of others and a community—improves the stickiness of character formation, and getting students to go deeper by working on developing good sense when there is conflict between the social and emotional skills they’re learning, is an excellent next step, Olson argues.

The UK’s Jubilee Centre offers a worksheet to assist teachers to help students think about the kind of person and type of life they want to pursue.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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