By Eileen Dachnowicz
“We were looking for a strategy that would empower students and reinvigorate character building,” says dynamic Sue Gager, the guidance counselor at Allen Creek Elementary (grades K–5) in suburban Rochester, New York. Spurred on by its connection with the Institute for Excellence & Ethics (IEE) and the teachings of Matt Davidson and Rich Parisi, Allen Creek has implemented compacts for excellence to live up to the school motto: Being our best selves, doing our best work.
The school abounds with compacts for excellence; they are found in every classroom, in the hallways, in the cafeteria, and on the buses. These compacts or agreements, alive with the student voice, serve as tangible guides to behavior that shows self-discipline as well as caring. Grace, a fifth grader, says, “The students are really the ones making the compact. If the compact says we treat everyone with respect, that’s what we will do.”
Anna, a fourth grader, says, “If we break the compact, we know that we have to understand the mistake and what we can do to fix it.” Fifth grader Mary Rose joins in, “The students also set goals. Goals help us accomplish a lot. Each student makes several goals a year, and we write down steps to help reach the goals.”
Another school that uses compacts for excellence, Charles M. Russell Middle School of the Performing Arts and Sciences (grades 6–8) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, finds that they serve as effective tools in another way: ensuring that cooperative work runs smoothly. With all individuals agreeing to work to potential at the outset of a project, group work is much more effective. David, an eighth grader, points out how such mutual decision-making works: “When we have a problem, we say ‘Let’s try to solve it.’”
A different form of compact, one that is a school-wide endeavor, is the collaborative designing of a touchstone that visually displays a school’s character focus. Such an approach has been embraced by Missouri’s Trautwein Elementary School (grades K–5), where the mantra We’re Tigers of Integrity; we care and we share was chosen by students, faculty, and parents and serves as a rallying call for getting along with one another and engaging in service projects. Dr. Donna Wagener, the school’s principal, points out that it is integrated “into all phases of school life” so that the students can “internalize the meaning of the phrase.”
Read more in the NSOC magazine, Schools of Character.
