CHARACTER COUNTS! and the Six
Pillars of Character are service marks of the CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition, a
project of the Josephson Institute of Ethics. For more information about
training opportunities and resources available to assist schools and communities
in the integration of a character education initiative, check out their web site
at: www.charactercounts.org or call
them at 1-800-711-2670.
IN THIS ISSUE…
Take A Minute For Character
TAKE A MINUTE FOR CHARACTER
By the time you receive this, school should be back in session. No matter what
position you hold, there is a time of preparation needed to get ready for a new
year. Preparing for back-to-school means we have to deal with people and paper.
Aren't there times you would like to be able to clone yourself as a way of
trying to get everything done? And then again, you may wish for a place to just
hide from the people and the piles of paper that seem never ending.
I too had to get ready for a new school year as August was a very busy month for
me with numerous out-of-state trainings for teachers and administrators. A few
weeks ago I was in California working with an administrative team on how to
build and strengthen an ethical culture for their school district. We focused on
not only how to deal with people within the school system and the myriad of
administrative tasks that need to be accomplished, but also addressed the
increasing demands of performance expectations.
In our profession, I have found that we tend to color our daily pictures of
school life with the premise, “If something will go wrong, it will.” We get
students in grades where we already have full classes and seldom in the grades
where we’d love to have more. Of course, our largest classes always have the
greatest number of students with special needs. The overprotective parent will
be the one whose child gets injured on the playground. Regardless of how much
planning we do, there will always be situations over which we seem to have no
control. Dozens of meetings and piles of Xeroxed memos will not eliminate
problems like these from occurring. The longer we are in this business, we
realize this to be fact.
What it really comes down to is our attitude toward life and our response to the
challenges we face on a daily basis. According to the Webster dictionary, the
word "attitude" means "an internal position or feeling with regard to something
else." Other words often used as synonyms are: "disposition, feeling, mood,
opinion, sentiment, temper, tone, perspective, frame of mind, outlook, view, or
morale." Airplane pilots often use "attitude" to describe their horizontal
relationship with the runway when they land. If their attitude isn’t aligned
properly, the plane will make contact with the ground at the wrong angle and it
will cause them to crash. In essence, our attitude is the inward disposition
toward other things, such as people or circumstances. As with an airplane,
attitude is applied whenever you must deal with something other than ourselves.
Too often our attitude is such is that we tend to blame our circumstances rather
than our choice we have to make.. If you dwell on the negative, your attitude
will reflect the same. It was Charles Swindoll who said, “I am convinced that
life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
At the California training, we spent time dealing with issues around people,
paper and performance. In a brainstorming exercise, the administrators came up
with what we called the “Top Ten Laws For Dealing with People While Encouraging
Improved Performance.” Let me share with you the list:
1. Treat others the way you want to be treated.
2. Remember that change is a door that only can be opened from the inside.
3. Carefully manage your time – it’s your scarcest and least renewable
resource.
4. Don’t ask someone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.
5. Use “we” rather than “I” when talking about your school or department.
6. Keep all promises – don’t promise more than you can deliver.
7. Recognize the reality that perception is everything.
8. Practice what you preach and preach what it is that you practice.
9. Don’t burn bridges you may have to cross again.
10. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve
always gotten…even a dead fish can swim downstream.
Maybe there is a pearl of wisdom here that will spark your interest this year in
how you approach the people, piles of paper and performance expectations.
Gary Smit
gsmit@forcharacter.com
HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL MENTORING PROGRAM
MENTOR has just released a comprehensive tool kit that offers step-by-step
instructions that programs can follow to implement key four components of
effective mentoring practice: Program Design and Planning; Program Management;
Program Operations; and Program Evaluation. It also contains a CD with more than
160 tools and templates that mentoring programs can customize to suit their
individual program needs. Programs can use these checklists to see how well they
are progressing in implementing the components. Organizations can download the
tool kit for free at:
http://www.mentoring.org/program_staff/eeptoolkit/index.php
INFORMATION YOU CAN USE
This activity can also be adapted for
use with students.
Another activity using quotations is as follows. Grade level: 2nd and up
In the "telephone" game, students sit or stand in a circle and one whispers a
quote in the ear of the person on the right. That person repeats it to the next
person, and so on until the wisdom goes around the circle. After the final
student recites the message as he or she heard it, show the group the original
quote. Did the quote remain accurate or did it get garbled? If it is an exact
match, award the group one point.
CHARACTER COUNTS! has developed sets of mini-posters containing quotations that
can be used for these activities or for just posting in classrooms. You can find
the posters at the
CC! web site.
For other activity ideas, go to:
www.charactercounts.org/ideas/ideatoc.htm
Lessons on Constitution Day and Citizenship Day
You may be interested to know that free, ready-to-use lessons designed to help
educators fulfill a new federal mandate are now posted at the Center's website:
http://www.civiced.org/byrd/ . This
federal mandate requires that every school-from elementary and secondary schools
to colleges and universities-provide instruction on the U.S. Constitution on
Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, September 17, the anniversary of the
document's signing. The mandate extends also to federal agencies. September 17
falls on a Saturday this year: Constitution Day may be observed the day before
or at any time around that date.
The lessons, which were developed in collaboration with the American Association
of School Administrators (AASA), are available for kindergarten through twelfth
grade. They contain multiple ideas for discussion topics, exercises, questions,
and activities, as well as short background readings and were adapted from the
Center's We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution text and Foundations of
Democracy curriculum.
CHARACTER COUNTS! WEEK
The third week of October is CHARACTER COUNTS! Week, when schools,
youth groups and entire communities across the U.S. will celebrate good
character. The CC! National Office wants to help you plan meaningful and fun
activities for the Week -- and throughout the year. To that end, they have
developed many free CC! Week resources you can use.
Go to
www.charactercounts.org/ccweek and register to receive a 10-percent discount
off CC! Week posters and vinyl banners, and to gain access to the free
downloadable resources, including: