11 Principles of Character Education for Students
Our goal at Oakhurst Elementary (OES) has always been to seamlessly integrate Character Education (CE) into all we do through strategic planning and shared moral leadership involving ALL stakeholders. Since our key stakeholders are the students themselves, we wanted them to serve as the true leaders in developing an intentional, proactive CE initiative at OES based on the 11 Principles. During the 2010-2011 school year, OES developed a student-friendly version of the Character Education Partnership's 11 Principles of Effective Character Education. Each year, our student leaders (Model Mustangs), a group of 50 plus students in 3rd-5th grade who spearhead many of our character education initiatives, rate our school's implementation of the 11 Principles using our student-friendly version of CEP's 11 Principles of Effective Character Education. Model Mustangs meet monthly to review the results of the Student CEP Self-Assessment and reflect on OES' CE practices; both areas of success and areas that need improvement. They then use these results as a springboard to plan student-led character education initiatives with the entire school.