Making Character Memorable
PUBLISHING OUR OWN BOOK OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT North Star Academy combines a unique school-wide thematic approach to character education, application through service learning, and integration by a school-produced "Literary Memoir." A theme or themes are selected that show an attribute of good character. Then a service learning activity is selected by the children to raise money, books, clothing, etc. that applies to the concept. Upon completion, the students each write what they learned through the experience by submitting their essays to the NSA Literary Memoir (yearbook). As an example, this year, the students studied the concept of leadership. The first semester was devoted to the organization, “The Seeing Eye.” The students watched videos about the organization and had guest speakers. Every classroom had a project to raise money to contribute to the training of a service dog. They had a contest to select a name for the pup. Five-thousand dollars was raised. The second semester was devoted to studying the attributes of leadership in great people. As a summary, the students each wrote a summary of what they had learned over the concept of leadership that will be published in the spring Literary Memoir (yearbook).