Students set personal goals at the start of the year.
A focus on the whole child and each child’s moral and social development pervades the program at Beauvoir the National Cathedral Elementary School, a 2011 National School of Character. The school invests a great deal of time and resources into the “social curriculum,” which is seen as being just as important as, and even part of, the academic curriculum.
All classes spend the first 6 weeks of the school year developing class norms according to the Responsive Classroom methodology. Part of this is the development of class constitutions, contracts, or promises.
Students also set specific personal goals called “hopes and dreams.” Both are posted and referred to regularly in each classroom. During daily morning meetings in each classroom, students greet each other, play a game together, share something of importance to one or more students, and read the morning message.
Even the youngest Beauvoir students start the year with learning the social curriculum in age-appropriate ways. When entering Pre-K, all students are given stuffed bears that they name, make clothes for, and then use for role playing throughout their first two years at Beauvoir. The bears are a tool to teach empathy teachers adapted from the book Bears, Bears, Everywhere by Luella Connelly.
Beauvoir is one of five cathedral schools located in the U.S. and one of three on the beautifully maintained grounds of the National Cathedral located in Washington, DC. Beauvoir is a private primary school, serving preschool aged children through third graders.
Beauvoir will be presenting at the 18th National Forum on Character Education in San Francisco, Oct. 19-22.
What a unique social and community building model they have developed at Beauvour! That combination of sharing, goal-building, and engagement within the curriculum is extremely rare and fosters many new ideas in my own mind with regards to expanding the communication between the students.
Best of all, it seems like something that definitely engages the children in a new way–a task that becomes harder year by year.
I agree. It’s stories like this that make me miss the classroom. Even though I have retired from teaching and love my work at CEP, I still get back-to-school fever every August.