Katie Hood, Web Content Coordinator for CEP

Being a relatively new CEP staff member (I started in Sept.), I’m still learning a lot about character education. I know the basics now – start small, get leadership on board, engage your out-of-school community – but I am still amazed when I hear the National Schools of Character stories. True learning happens in these schools because students want to learn, teachers want to teach, and parents and community members support them.

I recently listened to a radio show that discusses issues in American education. This day’s particular show focused on character education, and featured CEP’s National Schools of Character director Lara Maupin, and Crestwood Elementary School (MO) principal Scott Taylor.

The most striking thing I realized while listening to the show was that the most common issues in education: bullying, poor academic performance, pressure for students to reach test scores rather than truly learn just aren’t issues at NSOCs.

Scott talked about how his school earned the “Nobel Prize of Education,” according to his superintendent. His school was the only school in 2011 to be distinguished as a Blue Ribbon School and also a National School of Character. He said in the show, “It’s a tremendous honor –really the highest honor you can achieve in education – and certainly we would not have accomplished that without the character program that we have in place.”

That struck a chord with me because the correlation is really becoming clear about how character education relates to students doing better and being better. They said that teachers have more time to teach when they use character education as the foundation of their pedagogy. Students hold themselves and each other accountable to the virtues and values that they establish as important in their school. These values are typically respect, responsibility, honesty, doing your best – standards that most agree are positive. That way, teachers can spend their time teaching instead of disciplining students’ bad behavior.

It is important, they say, for the school community (students, parents, teachers, administrators, community leaders) to all discuss and reach consensus about the values taught. There is no one-size-fits-all character education program that works for everyone, but there are principles that can help guide all schools in providing quality character education. And these principles work for all types of schools – urban, rural, suburban, rich, poor, middle-income, minority, homogeneous, you name it.

Character education is not an add-on. It’s the foundation. And “when parents, staff, and students come together – great things happen,” says Principal Taylor. The proof is in the 170 NSOCs. Lara says, “In all of our NSOCs, we’ve seen the metrics go in the right direction, for both academic and discipline and behavior.”

Listening to this show really helped me understand how effective, comprehensive character education can be a part of the reform so obviously needed in American schools.

I had the great fortune of being raised by a loving family. They instilled in me certain values that shaped me into the person I am today. None of the adults in my family had much of a formal education though. My grandfather, for example, came to our country at the age of 10 with about a fifth grade education. He was a water boy on the railroad and later became a shoemaker.

My father never graduated from high school either. He fixed wrecked cars for a living and eventually owned his own shop–“Mazzola’s Body Shop.” It never had running water or central heat. During the winter, he burned coal in a pot-belly stove to warm the place up. I loved hanging out at his shop, and I learned a lot, too. Most people don’t know it, but I’ve painted cars, changed engines, installed transmissions, and I still service my own vehicles. In fact, I’m doing a brake job on my son’s car this weekend.

Oh. I forgot to mention why my dad never graduated from high school. He quit at the start of his senior year to go fight in World War II with his older brothers. You see, service to the nation was just one of the values stressed in our family. Since that was the case, it was an easy decision for me to enlist in the Air Force when I got older, even though it was very unpopular at the time.

Although I planned on doing my hitch and then moving on, I ended up spending more than 25 years in uniform. I did so because I loved being part of something meaningful, I loved working with honorable men and women, and I loved the fact that my organization stressed many of the same values I learned at home: Integrity, Service and Excellence.

Every year in November we celebrate Veterans Day. This year, encourage your students to reach out to veterans in your community. Besides having them thank the vets for their service, have them ask about the core values the vets lived by and how those values impacted their personal character. And, after Veterans Day, have the students share what they learned. I think you’ll find this can be a powerful character-building experience…and that’s what all good character educators look for!

Thanks for all you do to develop young men and women of good character for our world.

On a similar note, this year’s Promising Practices winners include schools like Gallup Hill Elementary in Ledyard Connecticut and South Grafton Elementary in South Grafton, Massachusetts whose P.E. teachers have helped to transform the recess period into constructive game time using character education and organized athletic activity. Their actions have greatly diminished playground shenanigans and bullying and encouraged cooperative play and teamwork.

All of these actions are the result of somebody seeing a need and doing something about it. Somebody took a few extra steps out there on the court, the field, and the playground and made a big difference.  We can’t measure how deeply these extra steps might impact a young kid somewhere.  These people might not ever know. 

So often, as teachers and mentors, we impact our students in tremendous ways that we don’t ever hear about; we hope that what we’re doing is making a difference somewhere to someone, and we keep on going.  Thurgood Marshall captured the sentiment so well when he wrote “None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.  We got here because somebody – a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns – bent down and helped us pick up our boots.”

Kudos to these teachers and community individuals who have taken a few extra steps, bent down, and helped pull up some bootstraps.  What’s going on around your own playgrounds, playing fields, and sport courts this summer? Let us know.

It is interesting, therefore, to study the words that are spoken on these historic occasions. What messages come across? What themes can we promote to future graduates? You will be hard pressed to find a graduation speech that extols the wisdom of achieving fame and wealth. Despite America’s ambitious and capitalistic nature, when it comes down to these defining moments in our lives, we stop to think about the qualities of life that really matter—things like being kind to others, respecting and valuing different opinions, being open to new experiences throughout your life—in general finding a way forward on the path to happiness.

Once you get past the obligatory references to late nights with too much alcohol, the endless opportunities open to new graduates, and the need to step back from social media every now and then—and even this year’s favorite theme: overcoming fear (fear of the future, fear of the job market, fear of progressing in life)—this year’s notable graduation speakers focused on how to get fulfillment out of life.

Despite their fame, speakers Denzel Washington, Amy Poehler and Tom Hanks did not encourage a focus on gathering fame and wealth. Rather, they emphasized going after what you’re passionate about, collaborating with others, and persevering in the face of failures. Poehler discussed the importance of finding a good group of people to work with and learn from: “You can’t do it alone. As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration….Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you.” By helping others, you learn and grow with them and some day those very same people will be able to help you on the way.

Other speakers (known more for their scholarly efforts) such as Thomas Freidman and Robert Krulwich followed a similar vein, while encouraging a connection to the wider world. The importance of working together with others spills over and affects a larger community. By being involved in your own efforts with others, you help to create chains of kindness that can stretch around the globe. Professor Robert Cargill shared some things he’d learned “over the past 18 years that may help you in your next 18 years…Say thank you. Be gracious. There is an Arab saying which says: ‘Blessed is the one who can say thank you in a thousand languages.’” He went on to thank his own college coaches, who taught him “not only…to play baseball, but how to compete with character and confidence in life.”

Even without years of wisdom, one graduating student boiled his thoughts down to this goal of happiness: “Happy people get what they want because often happy people are the ones who realize they don’t need much more than they already have and they appreciate what they’ve already got” (Chris Sacca, Univ. of Minnesota’s School of Management).

These ongoing efforts to work with others and find happiness prove just one thing—you never graduate from learning and demonstrating good character. This life-long endeavor is best summed up in the words of Denzel Washington speaking at UPenn: “Be open to life, to accept new views, be open to new opinions…because the chances you take, the people you meet, the people you love, the faith that you have, that’s what’s going to define you.”