Our high school has been named by the Character Education Partnership (CEP) a "National School of Character." Next week we will be in San Francisco to receive our award make a presentation on our programs at Seckman High School. Our journey to this place has been a bumpy ride with several miscues, and various degrees of exploration, experimentation and shared leadership. This feat took the efforts of our students, our parents, community leaders, our teachers, and the formal and informal leadership among students and staff within the school. This past year Seckman High School was also named the "Missouri Service Learning Leader School." One school counselor was a key for us in making this happen with stacks and stacks of papers, reports, and assorted items for documentation.
To most high school administrators and teachers the thought of implementing character education conjures up visions of kids with tiny pieces of yarn creating massive balls of peace and in the background people standing on hilltops while the choirs sing have a coke and a smile. I think that I've dated myself with that last reference. But character education has a very serious place among secondary schools. In fact, it IS the place that it belongs. The problem is in the delivery system. Traditional methods of providing character education in schools fits well at the primary level and when teaching at the lower end of the cognitive spectrum. However, these methods fall short when trying to implement lessons about character at the high school level. This leaves high school staff bewildered while trying to find yarn to build a peace ball.
After struggling to implement a program of character education, we did manage a few things. First, we managed to identify some key values. We created a student "Bill of Rights" and we provided training to both student leaders and staff -including administrators on character education. The program thrived at the elementary school and middle school. In fact, one middle was also named a "National School of Character" and another was named a "State School of Character." We continued to struggle at the high school until we began looking at Service Learning as a delivery system for character education.
Service Learning involves preparation, assessment, reflection, and celebration(PARC). Service Learning involves two key pieces: Service and Learning. This is not to overstate the obvious but many times service projects and service learning become confused. Service Learning is real world applications of character values that are integrated into the curriculum. It fits every academic area in the school. It is hands on learning for students. It is authentic, student centered and engaging in every step of its implementation. Students experience total immersion in character values and walk away changed from the experience. They begin to take ownership in their classwork and take value in their education.
In our school we began service learning on a small scale. We flooded the staff with service learning opportunities and prodded a few likely candidates with a canned -in the box, type program. This was the "Books of Hope" program. Our technology teacher and an English teacher teamed up to participate with their students. The English teacher had students write books of poems during their unit on poetry and the technology teacher threw out the Microsoft books and taught her kids publisher by publishing the poetry books created by the English classes. We also had a group that participated in Missouri's "Operation Clean Stream." Now, this really was a service project rather than service learning. But with a little bit of tweaking here and there it became a service learning project. The biology classes substituted a text book lab on microscopes and micro-organisms for "Operation Clean Stream." The Missouri department of Conservation came to the school and taught the classes how to take water samples from the stream behind the school. The kids examined the water samples under the microscope and wrote up their findings to share with the community. The culminating event involved cleaning debris from the stream on a Saturday morning. From that point more and more staff wanted to be involved in that kind of authentic learning. That year we received recognition from the St. Louis Cardinal Baseball organization, and from Character Plus as a "Champions of Character Service Learning School."
We certainly had that "peace ball" rolling. The next year we decided to try a school-wide service learning project themed around poverty. There were plenty of naysayers. As the project developed, the teachers began hearing from students about the life changing experiences they were having. More and more people began to buy into the process and chose to take ownership in Service Learning. Our project that year involved a partnership with several local charities and food pantries. We called it "Stuff the Bus" and the kids collected over 3000 jars of peanut butter, jelly, and spaghetti sauce, filled 2 full-sized buses, and 7 trucks with food, clothing, toys, books, school supplies, and assorted other items. Fox News showed up and filmed the event bringing our results to the community.
What about State Assessments? What about performance? These might be cause for concern. We took a lot of time out of class to plan and complete these projects. What if scores drop? The kids will feel good about themselves but we'll all be unemployed. This is the piece that quieted the last of the naysayers. Over the five year period that service learning was implemented nearly all of our performance indicators went up. Attendance, graduation rate, ACT scores, and even State Assessment Scores. Suspension rates decreased, number of discipline incidents went down, all while enrollment rates increased. I believe that these indicators were influenced by our kids experiences in authentic, hands-on, performance values based learning.
Our character education program and service learning continues to grow and this year we have partnered with a local health camp. I am excited and anxious to see the service learning activities that will take place. More importantly, I am excited and anxious to see the changes that occur with my staff and our students as they grow both personally and academically. I became an educator because I want to have a positive impact on kid's lives. Service learning has allowed me to see this happen in a real way.
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