A Case for Character Education in Secondary Schools

     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.

Faculty Meetings and School Improvement

Seckman is on the brink of a new age.  We recently had our monthly faculty meeting.  It's a regular event that at times has inspired and other times caused people to wish for the Apocalypse.  Our meetings have had several formats and various seating arrangements.  We have had meetings in the cafeteria, the library, the band room and even the multipurpose room.  Some meetings have had elaborate productions using high dollar technology or some that have barely had an agenda.  We have had meetings that have included outside speakers of varying notoriety and meetings that I have been the only one to speak - a feeble attempt to be a "sage on the stage."  But our most recent monthly event was by far the most productive, most challenging, personally demanding, positively professional event that a faculty meeting has ever attempted to embody.  Our meeting lasted about 30 minutes longer than normal, yet there were no complaints.  Our meeting involved sitting on hard chairs around crowded tables, yet no one complained.  There was no food -no drinks - no candy or snacks of any kind, yet no one complained.  What this meeting had was an opportunity for myself to step aside and listen to a staff of professionals share their wisdom with each other.  To discuss excellence in the classroom, what that looks like in our school, what it doesn't look like, how to fix those things that hold our school back and most importantly how to move our school forward.  We have been reading the book "The Fred Factor."  The staff completed a jigsaw activity where they shared their ideas, feelings, and goals about each chapter of the book.  Then they shared these ideas with fellow colleagues in other groups.  There was a genuine discourse among professionals about the things that make education and schools important in the lives of our young people today.  I said in the outset that we were on the brink of a new age.  This is an age where staff are engaged in learning and sharing with each other. It's an exciting place to be and a challenging place to be ... staff meetings will have to change if school improvement and staff development is going to become sustained.  Hip Hip Hooray for the SHS teachers and the huge step we have taken together in improving our school and the opportunities for our kids!

Awards, Recognition, and Rewards

I've always been a strong believer in using recognition and rewards to motivate kids to succeed.  I've heard a lot of criticism over the years because we recognize kids for doing what they ought to be doing in the first place.  One of my first faculty meetings as an assistant principal I asked everyone to be on time.  It was a resonable request and most of the teachers complied.  After all, later that day I was serving BBQ to the staff and so people were in a fairly good mood.  As people arrived to the meeting on time I handed them a spherical prize wrapped in foil.  When it was time for the meeting to begin I stopped passing out prizes.  Teachers arriving late knew that everyone else had received this shiny ball of a handout and many requested one for themselves.  I informed them that these round prizes were like a trophy for arriving on time.  We talked about the recognition program I wanted to use with our kids for attendance, behavior, and grades.  I heard the normal grumblings and then the questions: why are we recognizing these kids for doing what they are supposed to do? Bribes don't work!  I explained that rewards work so long as people know the goal, believe that the goal is attainable and the prize is visible. It doesn't have to have any real monetary value but have walk-around value.  Finally, someone asked about the spherical prize that the timely folks had received. I asked the late comers if they wanted the prize too.  Most conceded that they did want  the prize. I explained that the valued prize was simply a potato.  The prize that everyone wanted was inexpensive and most days would have little value.  That day the potato was a special treasure.  The people with the potatoes were asked to put their spherical treasure on the BBQ fire and reclaim them at lunch.  Everyone else had chips with their pork steaks.  The day of the next staff meeting everyone was on time and the BBQ was fun and delicious!

Homecoming Week

We are at that time of the school year when Homecoming activities dominate our daily activities at school.  The kids come to school dressed according to the theme of the day and the teachers take the opportunity to let their hair down and be a little goofy while everyone prepares for the assemblies, parades, sporting events, and dance.  One lucky couple will join a legacy of royalty while others join the court or just enjoy loud music and bouncing around a tarp covered hardwood floor. These events, while distracting as hell, form a connection between the student body and the classroom learning that takes place every week but homecoming week.  During this week I tend to notice the kids that are disconnected from the hoopla of the homecoming.  For whatever reason, they choose to not participate in any of the themed days, dances or attend any of the events associated with homecoming.  I 'm not sure I understand their decisions or their lack of participation.  I really think it's more than just a matter of being too cool.  It is a symptom of disengagement.  The question we need to ask is this: If homecoming type activities are the things that engage and create ownership for our kids in school  what happens to the kids that choose not to play or participate.  When I was in school everyone attended the homecoming dance and even more attended the game.  Today we will have about 2/3 of the student body attend the dance and even less attend the game.  Does this mean that 1/3 of the kids are not taking ownership in the school?  If there is no ownership in the school is there ownership into their own education?  I think that homecomings are more important to education than most people realize.  Perhaps the meaning has changed from the traditional return to our Alma mater.  Perhaps homecoming today is more important in terms of creating a "home" for those disengaged learners.  It is an attempt to get buy-in from our students.  I think a measure of engagement in the classroom could be the level of participation in homecoming activities.  What are the new homecomings for the future.  What are the activities that gain access to the minds of the students of tomorrow?

Thoughts on Professional Development

9-28-10     Our most effective professional development activities have been gleaned from our staff needs survey, presented by experienced competent staff, and are activities that directly impact student learning and classroom instruction.  This is not to overstate the obvious, but too much emphasis is sometimes placed on outside experts that bring the flavor of the month in to a school with all the answers to the problem of the week.  We take the evaluations at the conclusion of PD activities seriously and attempt to modify and correct problems that are identified.  At times, teacher needs and district necessities require a balancing act to make everything work.  We have managed to strike that balance in a positive productive way.  Food always helps and refreshments are a necessity.  We are currently partnering with Living Well Village, a local camp that focuses on healthy living, to conduct a school wide service-learning project.  Some of our professional development time has been utilized to identify opportunities to expand the walls of our school into the community and specifically into the Living Well Village.  Teacher leaders are wax that holds this whole endeavor together.  We have some tremendous teacher leaders.  I have a fantastic staff and my assistant principals have formed a team that seems to address most of our needs.  Of course that is the basis for every successful organization, that is, clearly focused professionals working towards a common goal.