Planning Character Education Programs
Strategies for Bringing Virtues to the School Community
Oct 30, 2009
Many schools are eager to find ways to teach students how to make good decisions. In a world of bad role models, unethical behavior, and crumbling family support, schools are frequently turning to character education programs to help. But how should schools begin this process?
Creating a Character Education Planning Team
Schools may want to create a planning team charged with the task of researching, planning, developing, and evaluating a new character education program. The team should include a variety of members representative of the entire school community, including parents and support staff. Part of the planning process will include examining other school character education programs and deciding what core values the program will focus on.
Researching Character Education
Before implementing a large scale character education program, program planners will want to do some research first. Teams may want to consider Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility by Thomas Lickona, or Building Character in Schools: Practical Ways to Bring Moral Instruction to Life by Kevin Ryan. These excellent resources provide background, rationale, and ideas for how to structure programs. Planning teams should consult a variety of sources before deciding on the best way for their school to approach the issue.
Choosing the Virtues
Planning teams could easily come up with a few dozen virtues that are important for kids to master. A character education program may be strongest when it focuses on a handful of virtues in a structured, systematic way. Teams will need to decide which virtues will be most important to their particular program and population.
Partnering With the Community
Schools may want to partner with organizations, agencies, or businesses in the community who want to make character education a priority not just within the school building, but in the area at large. The YMCA, for example, has character education as part of its mission; it’s core values are caring, honesty, respect, and responsibility. Mirroring a school program after an existing area program may help to create a firmer foundation and encourage more involvement from those outside the school community.
Finding Character Education Resources
Resources abound for educators who want to impart character education lessons to students. Sandra McLeod Humphrey’s What Would You Do? series [Prometheus Books] offers a series of moral dilemmas to get kids thinking. Barbara A. Lewis’ What Do You Stand For: A Guide to Building Character [Free Spirit Publishing, 1999], available in both kids and teens versions, contains stories and activities to help highlight the different virtues. A wide variety of books, both for educators and for students, are available to enhance learning.
Taking the time to do the proper planning and research can greatly enhance the success of a school based character education program. Please also see Implementing Character Education Programs for the next step in this process.
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