Includes a  meaningful and challenging  academic  curriculum that respects all learners, develops their character, and helps them to succeed.

When students succeed at the work of school and feel a sense of competence and autonomy, they are more likely to feel valued and cared about as persons.

Because students come to school with diverse skills, interests and needs, an academic program that helps all students succeed will be one in which the content and pedagogy are sophisticated enough to engage all learners.

This means providing a curriculum that is inherently interesting and meaningful to students. A meaningful curriculum includes active teaching and learning methods such as cooperative learning, problem-solving approaches, and experience-based projects.

These approaches increase student autonomy by appealing to students interests, providing them with opportunities to think creatively and test their ideas, and fostering a sense of "voice and choice" having a say in decisions and plans that affect them.

In addition, effective character educators look for the natural intersections between the academic content they wish to teach and the character qualities they wish to develop. These "character connections" can take many forms, such as addressing current ethical issues in science, debating historical practices and decisions, and discussing character traits and ethical dilemmas in literature.

When teachers bring to the fore the character dimension of the curriculum, they enhance the relevance of subject matter to students' natural interests and questions, and in the process, increase student engagement and achievement.