leadership

Student filmmakers educate classmates about substance abuse

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A group of students at Scotland’s Harlow Academy recently partnered with local police and community organizations to send a powerful message about the danger of illegal drugs, and they debuted their work in July at the Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen.

The teens spent weeks with police officials, the Aberdeen FC Community Trust, the Alcohol and Drugs Action charity and Station House Media Unit to create a seven minute fictional movie about the dangers and consequences of substance abuse, The Press and Journal reports.

The project was designed to educate students about the risks involved with illegal drugs, while also developing practical skills in video editing and film making. Officials hope to use the film in schools across the city to steer students toward positive life choices and offer ways they can avoid illegal drugs.

Thirteen-year-old Reece Main, who plays a drug dealer in the film, told the Press and Journal “it was a really fun project to do and we learned a lot about what can happen to you if you take drugs.”

“It was a lot of hard work but we all worked really hard on it together,” he said. “I hope it can help others find out about the dangers.”

Community policing team Inspector David Cowie told the news site he’s “hugely proud” of the Harlow students who participated.

“The work they’re doing is so important,” Cowie said. “The police and the schools are always putting out the message to steer clear of drug use, but when it’s a message delivered by your peers, I think there’s a much greater chance of pupils listening to what’s being said and learning important lessons.”

The police inspector also commended the proactive approach.

“If we can get a strong preventative message out to young people at this important point in their lives and help them to understand what can happen if you misuse substances like alcohol, drugs and tobacco, it can really make a big difference for the kids, local police teams and the local community.”

James Davison Hunter, sociologist and founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, highlighted the importance of educating students about both the dangers risky behavior, and the bigger picture of why they should avoid it.

“For parents and other adults, the task of ‘saving our children’ means, in large part, telling children what they are being saved for,” Hunter wrote in “The Content of Their Character,” a summary of character formation in a wide variety of schools. The task of educating children means teaching them the larger designs that could give form and focus to their individual aspirations, so they can come to understand not only how to be good but why.”

Understanding the “why” involves a focus on what’s most important, and educators looking to help guide students towards “the good life” can find resources and lessons from the UK’s Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues.

One such lesson – “Beginning at the End” – encourages students to imagine looking back on their lives 70 to 80 years from now, and prompts them to ponder what they want to guide the journey, considering motivators like the pursuit of pleasure, wealth, status, power, knowledge and ethical living outlined in Aristotle’s “The Nicomachean Ethics.”

 

 

Newcomer to America champions social justice and equal rights

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When 13-year-old Natasha Wanjiru escaped the slums of Nairobi, Kenya to study in America on a scholarship with Bridge Academy, she didn’t forget about her siblings and countless other children who weren’t as fortunate.

Two years later, while home in Nairobi during summer break, Wanjiru spoke about her time at the prestigious Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, and how she’s now working to expand opportunities for young girls back home to follow in her footsteps, Standard Media reports.

Her journey started when she joined a Bridge International Academy in Kenya with her brother in 2013 and saw a poster offering scholarships to study in America for top students, according to the Bridge website.

“I got really inspired,” she said. I never knew that something that great could happen to me. So I worked really hard because I knew if I could study in the United States it would really help my family.”

Wanjiru received high marks on achievement tests and initially landed a scholarship through the Kenya Education Fund to cover tuition her mother could not afford at Moi Girls High School in the Kamusinga slums of Nairobi in 2016. After only about five months at the school, she was selected by Bridge International Academies to study at Episcopal High School starting in ninth grade.

She’s now working to recruit her school community in America to contribute to her “change4change” project to sponsor kids from her slum to attend Kenyan secondary schools.

“Teachers and my schoolmates are passionate about changing the lives of children in Kenyan slums. They have been contributing to the course and we have managed to sponsor 30 students,” she said. “There are 18 others with individual sponsors.”

Wanjiru said it’s an effort inspired by her own experience and fueled by a passion for social justice and equal rights.

“The problem with the society is that a single negative narrative of poverty associated with children in slums has curtailed our ability to see the potential in them,” Wanjiru said, referencing a TED talk from her favorite fiction author Chimamanda Adichie of Nigeria.

“I get disturbed at Episcopal when I imagine the number of girls, especially in slums and rural areas, who do not go to school due to lack of fees and end up in early marriages,” she said. “I am working towards getting an organization that is actively involved in social justice issues like education.”

While it’s difficult to know how much Episcopal High School contributed to Wanjiru’s sense of social justice and equal rights, it’s clear those virtues flourished when she landed in America.

Researchers with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture noted how urban public high schools value compassion in “The Content of Their Character”, an analysis of character education in a wide variety of U.S. schools.

“The teachers, staff, and administrators all deeply prized compassion,” researches wrote, “especially in each other, and then to some extent in their students.”

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues offers lessons for educators to help students consider how they practice compassion in their lives. One lesson, “Build Your Own Virtue: Compassion” encourages students to draw inspiration from literature and history, and to look to role models that bring the virtue to life.

 

Schools focus on civics to bridge political divides, engage students in government and community

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Civics is making a comeback in schools, sparked in part by the 2016 election.

“This town is liberal and I thought that was the way of the world,” Mamaroneck High School freshman Jacobi Kandel told The New York Times. “I totally thought Hillary was going to be the first female president. Then I woke up and said, ‘What’s going on?’”

Kandel is among dozens of students at the New York school who were inspired by the 2016 election to sign up for a new four-year program called Original Civic Research and Action, which tasks students with developing a useful solution to an ongoing problem in the community.

The initiative is part of a broader push in schools and statehouses across the country aimed at engaging students in government and service. Only Maryland and the District of Columbia require community service and civics classes for graduation, while 11 states have no civics requirement. Nine states and the District of Columbia require a full year of civics instruction, and 30 states require a half-year, the Times reports.

Experts said a laser focus on core subjects like math and English have consumed class time previously devoted to civics, and the result is reflected in the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, which showed only 18 percent of 8th graders scored at or above proficient in American History in 2014. Only 23 percent of students met the threshold for civics, according to the news site.

The disengagement seems to continue after high school, with less than half of 18- to 24-year-olds voting in the 2016 election nationwide, the lowest turnout among all age groups.

The renewed focus on civics in schools aims to both boost engagement and counter the divisive political culture. Lawmakers in several states are also considering legislation to increase civics requirements for students, in some cases with mandatory citizenship tests.

Mamaroneck High School government and history teacher Joseph Liberti told the Times he attempted unsuccessfully to launch the Original Civic Research and Action program in the past, but “launching it became much easier in 2016,” when Americans elected Donald Trump president.

“The energy was there and I was able to ride that wave,” he said.

Officials in other schools like Chicago’s Polaris Charter Academy are also helping students better understand the intersection of government and community, while encouraging them to work together and consider opposing opinions. A student-led campaign at Polaris last year focused on gun violence, and it required students to research the Constitution and Second Amendment, and work with police, lawmakers, activists and gang members, the Times reports.

“This is not just about a high school civics class. – It’s not to prepare students for tests, but to prepare them to be active, contributing citizens,” said Ron Berger, who oversees academics for Polaris’ parent company EL Education. “We’ve forgotten about that as a nation.”

In his book “The Death of Character,” Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture founder James Davison Hunter points to esteemed sociologist Charles Moskos’ perspective on the importance of developing a shared sense of civic virtue.

“… (A)s Charles Moskos put it, ‘because of the relative weakness of other forms of community …., our cohesion depends upon a civic ideal rather than on primordial loyalties.’ In this way, service-learning as a vehicle of civic education can be a means by which communities are drawn together again,” Hunter wrote.

Educators who want to bridge political divides and help students engage in their communities can find a wealth of resources through CIVITAS, a comprehensive K-12 model for civic education developed with the help of dozens of leading scholars and classroom teachers from across the country.

Vermont’s ‘Good Citizen Challenge’ inspires students to engage history, government, community

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Students in Vermont are signing up for a summer of civics – a new program designed to educate students about their shared civic heritage while connecting them with local government and historic sites.

The Good Citizen Challenge is sponsored by Seven Days, a Vermont newsweekly, and the Vermont Community Foundation.

“The self-guided Challenge encourages young Vermonters to explore historic sites, engage in conversations with neighbors and elected officials, develop media literacy skills and learn about the rights and duties of U.S. citizenship,” Seven Days reports.

“Geared toward kids ages 9 to 14, the Challenge is open to all Vermont K-12 students. Activities include visiting the Calvin Coolidge Homestead, attending a city council or selectboard meeting, reading a community newspaper and drawing a cartoon explaining how the three branches of government work.”

Students earn points for each activity with the goal of reaching 251 – the number of towns in the state. Students who meet the threshold and send in their scorecards receive a Good Citizen medal and T-shirt, as well as an invitation to a special reception at the Vermont Statehouse where elected officials from across the political spectrum will recognize the “Good Citizens,” according to the news site.

Seven Days deputy publisher Cathy Resmer said the Good Citizen Challenge is modeled after Vermont State Parks’ 10-year-old Venture Vermont Outdoor Challenge, which is aimed at motivating youngsters to take advantage of the state’s natural resources.

“My family loves Venture Vermont. It gives a little structure to our summer adventures, and inspires us to try new activities,” said Resmer, editor of Seven Days’ free monthly parenting magazine, Kids VT. “We hope the Good Citizen Challenge will do the same thing, but for civics.”

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, and Secretary of State Jim Condos offered support for the program at a press conference announcing its launch in late May. Ethan Sonneborn, a 14-year-old Democrat candidate for governor, also applauded the effort.

Resmer told Seven Days the program is designed to focus on the democratic values that unite at a time of divisive politics. And with recent studies showing a majority of the public struggles with basic civics, it’s more important than ever.

“How can Americans participate in their democracy — or defend it — if they don’t understand the principles on which it rests?” asked Resmer. “As former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said, ‘Civic knowledge can’t be handed down the gene pool. It has to be learned.’”

There is wisdom in this program as it has provided a low-cost means to help structure students’ summer vacation with a civic purpose. But it is more of an onramp toward civic education than an ending point. It is unlikely that these self-directed learnings and experiences will expose students to the most pressing questions of contemporary civic life: How do we live with our deepest differences in society of expanding pluralism or to the ideas that are the pillars of democracy? James Hunter and Ryan Olson warn, “Only the particularity of moral community can bind our natural feelings of empathy with the substance and direction of what we ought to do.” Civic knowledge without a communal basis in “oughtness” will prove inadequate to contemporary life.

Notwithstanding the challenges in engaging students in meaningful civic learning, efforts to generate interest in and enthusiasm for learning about government and our democratic institutions must ensure student engagement .  Teachers interested in fermenting student interest in civics education can find information and ideas by looking at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.  The Jubilee Centre features teacher lesson plans for teaching students how to prepare for adulthood here.

‘Daughters of Worth’ nonprofit reaches out to engage, inspire young girls

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North Carolina mother Liz Liles is making it her life’s mission to help young girls in her community.

Liles told The Daily Reflector she was adopted as a child and struggled during her youth with questions about why her birth mother gave her up, an insecurity that had a strong impact on her life and ultimately compelled her to reach out to young girls questioning their own worth.

“A lot of that deep-rooted insecurity stays with you, and it really begins to shape the way that you see the world,” she said. “Unless you really heal from those wounds, they just go with you.”

That realization became especially clear when Liles, a mother of two boys, moved back to North Carolina after a failed marriage. She accepted a job at The Salvation Army that put her in regular contact with young girls facing serious life traumas, including one girl who was gang raped, and another who fears for her life and sleeps with a knife under her pillow.

“That really opened my eyes to the needs that are here,” Liles said. “We don’t realize the depth of the need that’s in our own backyard.”

Especially when children feel abandoned by their parents, deep psychological deficits persist. Research shows the heightened importance here of adult examples, encouragement, and mentorship. Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture state that it is “far more poignant and influential” than merely classroom instruction (The Content of Their Character, p. 285).

The situation convinced Liles to create the nonprofit Daughters of Worth in 2015. With the help of volunteers, Liles created GLAM (Girls Living A Mission) groups at area elementary schools to mentor young girls. The GLAM Girls, which have steadily grown from about a dozen to roughly 90 girls, take field trips together and work to help groups like the Community Crossroads Center, a Greenville homeless shelter.

“We try to give them experiences they may not have had outside the group,” volunteer Alyssa Hardee said.

“I guess my experience of being a school counselor, seeing what some girls are up against, I just see so many of them struggling with not having positive interactions or role models,” she said. “I just thought it was really important to be someone who could make a difference.”

In more recent years, Liles has expanded the program to offer “Notes of Hope” for first- and second-grade girls to offer regular, positive affirmations, as well as “Grace Gifts,” which offers lessons about financial management and philanthropy. In total, the Daughters of Worth programs have reached about 300 girls.

Kelli Joyner, a counselor at H.B. Sugg Elementary, said many girls at her school have received the “Notes of Hope,” and it’s obvious Daughters of Worth is making a big impact.

“They tell me, ‘I have my other ones pinned up in my room,’” she said. “It means a lot to these girls.”

When teachers and principals think about how to motivate students who have suffered setbacks and adversity in their lives, there are lesson plans at the UK’s the Jubilee Centre. These lessons plans focus on flourishing from the margins and can be found here.

‘I can’t imagine’: High school students interview Vietnam vets to document living history

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Students at McDowell High School are getting in-depth lessons about the Vietnam War from North Carolina veterans who fought on the front lines.

Dozens of students spent a recent day interviewing numerous Vietnam War veterans from the community who served in different military units during the two decade long conflict that ended more than 40 years ago, WLOS reports.

“Vietnam is not a good place for me,” Frank, a veteran, told students. “I had an opportunity to go back and would not go back.”

The discussions were part of a broader school project to document the living history in the community, and students recorded their conversations with veterans, who brought in pictures, uniforms, and other memorabilia from their tours of duty.

Students learned how the war impacted soldiers, as well as how they were treated by their countrymen once they arrived home.

“We got eggs threw at us when we came back home. We were shunned by people in society, and we just came back and went back to work and never said anything about it for 40 years,” local combat vet Randy Hollifield said. “That’s the way we were. We never said anything.”

The lesson also included a walk to a veteran’s memorial at McDowell Senior Center, where students reflected on the sacrifices veterans made for their freedoms. Afterwards, students enjoyed lunch with veterans to share their thanks. Veterans also expressed gratitude students have an interest in a time in U.S. history that profoundly shaped their lives.

An ongoing controversy surrounding moral education is its potential threatens other academic subjects. Here the two efforts are combined effectively where the study of living history connects to the cost of personal sacrifice. Researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture note “Moral thickness and thinness take form in several dimensions. The most prominent examples of ‘thickness’ drew upon sacred texts, traditions, and exemplars as their sources of moral authority and imagination” (The Content of Their Character, p. 279). Here living history connects personally with the students and their moral imagination.

Student Hayden Vaughn told WLOS the experience was eye-opening.

“Right now I’m stressing out about colleges for me to pick. I can’t even imagine knowing that I’m not going to go to college, I’m going to be sent off to war as soon as I graduate from high school,” he said. “I can’t imagine what that would feel like.”

Teachers and principals who want to emphasize the power of role models to help their students acquire strengthened moral and character formation can find learning activities and information at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.  The learning activities can be found here.

 

IN teachers use lessons from Nazi atrocities to reach traumatized students

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Indianapolis teachers are working to integrate Eva Kor’s story into their lesson plans.

It’s a story about hate and evil, trauma and redemption. It’s also a story about tolerance and forgiveness.

Numerous educators trekked to the Indianapolis Central Library on a recent Wednesday to watch the “Story of Eva,” a documentary about how Nazi eugenicist Josef Mengele carried out medical experiments on Kor and her twin sister during World War II. Kor, a Romanian who now lives in Terre Haute, was eventually liberated from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and moved to America, where she struggled with anger and felt like an outcast, Chalkbeat reports.

Eventually, Kor found a voice as an advocate, and gained national attention for hunting down Mengele and forgiving him.

Historical stories are a powerful way to provide direct moral instruction, particularly in public school settings where direct moral instruction is often perceived as controversial.

Writing about a four-year study of character and citizenship in ten types of American high schools, researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture explained in The Content of Their Character that “As a rule, we tended to see greater articulation in the private and religious schools than in the public schools.” Researchers found history-based character lessons in rural public, Jewish, Catholic, prestigious independent, and alternative pedagogy high schools. For public schools, the collaborative effort in this story demonstrates that it’s possible to teach moral lessons through history in creative ways throughout a school’s curriculum.

The movie screening was set up by Teach Plus, a teacher advocacy organization that hosted group discussions among educators after the event. Teachers discussed the film’s messages about dealing with anger and trauma, and how many students in their classrooms could relate to Kor.

“I kind of wish her message was antiquated,” eighth-grade KIPP Indy College Prep teacher Andrew Pillow told the news site. “I wish that I couldn’t find context to teach this today.”

Teacher and mother of twins Melissa Humpfer said she knows at least one student who could relate well to Kor’s experience of being forcibly removed from her home to suffer severe hardship.

“I see the anger she had, and it’s almost the same even though she went through so much with being tortured,” Humpher said. “I see parallels with him, and I can’t wait to show him this, and I can’t wait to have that discussion.”

Schools across the country are moving toward a more “trauma informed” teaching that are connecting community groups, residents and businesses to support students. The film screening in Indianapolis, for example, was a collaboration between Teach Plus, the library and WFYI Public Media.

Educators discussed afterward how students can likely relate to Kor’s story on a variety of levels, whether their issues involve anger, racism, or some form of other serious trauma and evil.

“It’s transformative to know that there are different groups of people who deal with the same things as your group is dealing with,” teacher Pillow said. “Your group is not the only group that’s ever been discriminated against in the past, and probably won’t be in the future. I think that, in and of itself, is a powerful tool for acceptance.”

The UK’s Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues has developed extensive curriculum for secondary school teachers to teach character. The virtue of justice could be applied to examples of evil and injustice that are found throughout history. The Jubilee Centre’s lesson on justice would be a reliable place for educators to begin.

‘Changed the way I carry myself’: Students, parents tout benefits of military academy

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Parents of Hargrave Military Academy graduates recently explained the reasons why they opted to send their children to the highly structured Virginia private school for boys, and it centers on one word: character.

David Renaker, whose son Corey Renaker graduated from Hargrave in 2016, told WRAL the discipline at the military academy helped to limit distractions from social media, video games and other time wasters to help his son focus on what’s most important.

“The changes that have been made in Corey are dramatic. He’s a different person. He’s respectful, prompt, cares about what’s going on, and cares about his future,” David Renaker said. “I can’t say those were character traits he had before going to Hargrave. Hargrave made a tremendous difference in his life and ours.”

The single-sex, academically rigorous environment focuses a lot on students’ post-graduation success, both by forming character strengths to help them persevere and offering more challenging courses than traditional high schools, parents said.

Researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture contrast the prevalent views of school culture: “There is a skeptical view that suggests that tight social networks of oversight provide an ongoing surveillence over young people, giving them little room to experiment or make mistakes. The more positive construction would be that a close community provides a watchful and loving attentiveness that allows the young person to thrive.” The social ecology of a school is determinative in character formation.

“Because of Hargrave, his GPA has risen, he got a full four-year scholarship to Alabama, plus an engineering scholarship on top of that,” said Calyx Harris, whose son Hayden Bressoud graduated from Hargrave in 2017. “He found fraternity and camaraderie here at Hargrave; it’s just been a fantastic experience.”

Like many private schools, Hargrave expects students to adhere to strict schedules and rules of decorum, and stresses self-discipline. Parents and students said the structure, along with school uniforms, expected code of conduct, and other rules contribute to a sense of safety and order that’s often absent from public schools.

Shaq Lawson, a 2012 Hargrave grad who was drafted to the NFL in 2016, told WRAL he credits his success in large part to the military-style regimen.

“I believe God put me on the right path to be successful. If I hadn’t gone to Hargrave, I’d have had a much harder time adjusting to life at Clemson in my freshman year,” he said. “Going to Hargrave changed the way I carry myself. It made me more accountable, more responsible, more of a man.”

Teachers and principals working to strengthen moral and citizenship formation in their students can find information and strategies at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.

U.S. Navy renews focus on character development

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The U.S. Navy is updating its leadership programs at the Naval War College with a keen focus on character and competence which may have been prompted after a series of embarrassing ship collisions last year.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson announced the changes at the Rhode Island school in early April, when he announced the formation of a new College of Leadership and Ethics to weave lessons on character, self-awareness, leadership and ethics into the curriculum, according to U.S. Naval Institute News.

Trainees at the College of Leadership and Ethics will receive 10 days of devoted class time in each core class, as well as additional military faculty to boost the role of what was formally the Navy Leadership and Ethics Center.

Richardson told the news site the Navy is also working to ensure sailors, both subordinates and those in leadership, get feedback from others about their performance and character development through the service’s assessment system.

“We’re in the final stages of a revision to our FITREPS (officer fitness reports) system, our evaluation system. So in an ideal closed-loop environment you would say at the beginning, this is what we value, this is what we think is important. We’re going to teach you those things (through schools, on-the-job training and self-learning). So that’s how we move you along this road in competence and character,” Richardson said.

Researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture believe that there are five ways that “thick” moral communities can best be formed.  They identify the following in the Institute’s latest publication, The Content of Their Character—1) authoritative sources, 2) formal instruction, 3) informal “catching,” 4) routine practices, and 5) surrounding social support—one might want to add evaluation. You become what you measure. Here the Navy is adding character to their FITREP evaluations and thereby highlighting the Navy’s aspiration of a “good person.” This steps makes character real and an essential part of the school’s culture.

The Institute for Advanced Studies’ latest book, The Content of Their Character provides findings of the Institute’s research into ten sectors of K-12 high school across America regarding moral and citizenship formation of high school students.  The sectors studied were as follows:  urban public high schools, rural public high schools, charters, evangelical schools, Catholic schools, Jewish and Muslim schools, prestigious independent schools, alternative pedagogy schools and homeschooling.

Admiral Richardson said two fatal ship collisions with commercial vessels last year did not prompt the changes, but did provide examples of why leadership and ethics are important.

“When you think about where our commanding officers and leaders fall short, there’s just been too many instances where those shortcomings have had to do with ethical types of issues, in addition to the competence thing. So it’s clearly an area where we needed to make sure we were emphasizing,” he said.

“Perhaps the ultimate expression of trust and confidence is to give that commanding officer that ship and that crew and expect them to go over the horizon on their own and come back stronger than when they left in every respect, both from a warfighting competence standpoint but also I want them to bring our teams back stronger in character,” Richardson continued. “And so there was certainly an element of the [post-collision] investigations that said, hey, we need to really make sure that in each of our communities – and this one focused on the surface community – that our careers, our education, our career path is really focused on developing competent, confident commanding officers with the competence of character.”

Teachers and principals wanting to strengthen moral and citizenship formation in their students will find information and strategies to do so at the UK’s Jubilee Centre.

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.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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