STOP TEACHING SUBJECTS, START TEACHING CHILDREN (July 13)

STOP TEACHING
SUBJECTS,
START TEACHING
CHILDREN
Teachers as Agents of Character Formation
By Emmanuel M. Rentoy

school is the first social structure
the child encounters, and it
provides an excellent opportunity
for character-building.

Character shapes our children’s destiny,
what makes them good people, and gives
them the best hope for a brighter tomorrow.
Advancing our children’s moral skills is
where we must put our energy and
resources. It has never been more important
to nurture character in young people.
Dr. Michele Borba

School is not just about
learning concepts; it is
also a place where a
foundation can be built
for becoming
upstanding adults.

Every school should set a tone of
respect, honesty and genuine
kindness for all students.
Whether they like it or not,
teachers are role models for
students and can provide
examples of good character
every day in the classroom.
Students notice what teachers,
do, say, tolerate, and how they
handle challenges.

Deliberate
Role model
Observable

Character is the key to
self-respect, the
respect of others,
positive relationships,
a sense of fulfillment,
achievement, a happy
marriage—to success
in every area of life.

11
BIG IDEA
The content of good character is virtue.
Virtues are objectively good human qualities,
good for the individual and
good for the whole society.

You need
PERFORMANCE
CHARACTER (hard
work, determination)
to do your best work.
You need MORAL
CHARACTER to be
your best—to act with
love and respect—in
any relationship.

16
Reader’s Digest (Dec., 1995)
Lost Wallet Study
In countries around the world,
1,100 wallets were “lost” —each
with $50 and the owner’s ID and
phone number.
Wallets were left on sidewalks; in phone booths;
in front of office buildings, discount stores, and
churches; and in parking lots and restaurants.

Worldwide:
• 56% were returned with
the contacts intact.
• 44% were not.
17

When interviewed, wallet returners cited:
• Parents teaching them to “do the right thing.”
• Their religious beliefs.
• Empathy for the wallet’s owner.
Character matters.
18

Wallets Returned, by Country
19
Norway &
Denmark 100%
returned
Singapore
90%
New Zealand
83%
(Google “Lost
Wallet Study” to
see country-by-
country findings)
___________
21% (lowest rate)

BIG IDEA
Human behavior is
shaped by the
interaction of
character and
culture.

Character is what’s on the
inside—the dispositions
that influence how we act.
Culture is what’s on the
outside—everything that
makes up our environment
and brings out the best or
the worst in us.

The negative influence of contemporary culture on
values and character:
Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging
Adulthood (2011)
—University of Notre Dame sociologist
Christopher Smith and colleagues
• A study based on interviews with a representative
national sample of 18-23-year-olds in the US.

Moral
Relativism
26
60% of Smith’s national sample
were “moral individualists”
who think there are no
objective rights and wrongs.
Moral values such as honesty
were viewed as a matter of
“personal choice” rather than
moral obligation.

Captive to Consumerism
“What would living the good life
look like to you?”
•54% said they would be happier
if they could buy more things.
•Only 25% spoke of wanting to
help others or being a positive
influence in others’ lives.

Substance
Abuse
•Nearly half said they
had engaged in binge
drinking (5 or more
alcoholic drinks within
one hour) in the past
two weeks.
28

The Dark
Side of
the Sexual
Revolution
29
Nearly 6 in 10 express
regrets about their
sexual experiences.

The Dark
Side of
the Sexual
Revolution
30
“Many are confused, hurting,
and sometimes ashamed
because of sexual experiences
in a culture that told them
simply to go for it.”

THE SEXUAL
REVOLUTION
The sexual revolution,
beginning in the 1960s and
still spreading across the
world through the mass
media, is the dominant
cultural revolution of the
past half-century.

The sexual
revolution
promoted an
ideology of radical
sexual freedom.
It said that sex can be enjoyed
without marriage, without
commitment, even without any
kind of emotional connection to
the other person.

THE CALL TO BE
COUNTERCULTURAL
•To raise good kids, we
must take deliberate
steps to create a
family culture that
fortifies children against
the toxic influences of
the wider culture.

BIG IDEA
TO EDUCATE KIND KIDS,
WE MUST:
1. Help each student build
a strong personal
character based on
virtuous habits
(kindness, respect, etc.).
This is the work of habit
formation.

BIG IDEA
TO EDUCATE KIND KIDS,
WE MUST:
2. Build a strong culture of
character in the school
and every classroom that
expects and supports the
development of good
character and brings out
the best in all.

BUILD
CHARACTER,
BUILD
CULTURE.

OUR TASK AS
PARENTS and
TEACHERS:
Develop our
children’s capacity
for goodness, curb
their capacity for
cruelty, and foster
the courage to come
to the aid of those
who are mistreated.

The Science of
Parenting for
Character:
“THE
FABULOUS 5”
PARENTING
PRACTICES
A Meta-Analysis
of the Research

Marvin Berkowitz and
John Grych, “Fostering
Goodness: Teaching
Parents to Facilitate
Children’s Moral
Development,” Journal of
Moral Education, 27, no
3, 1998.

•examined 76 parenting
studies from the US, Canada,
and the UK.
•defined “moral character” as
“the constellation of
psychological characteristics
that motivate and enable
individuals to act in ethical,
democratic, and socially
effective and productive
ways.”

They found 8 character outcomes
that fell within their broad
definition of moral character:
Empathy
Conscience
Altruism
Moral Reasoning
Social Orientation
Compliance (with rules and
legitimate authority)
Self-esteem
Self-control

THE FABULOUS
FIVE
1. Setting High (But
Appropriate)
Expectations (how
authority is used)

THE FABULOUS
FIVE
2. Nurturance (how love is
expressed)

THE FABULOUS
FIVE
3. Modeling (acting in the
moral ways one wants the
child to imitate)

THE FABULOUS
FIVE
4. Reasoning (helping kids
understand how their
behavior affects others)

THE FABULOUS
FIVE
5. Empowerment (giving
kids voice and
responsibility)

THE FABULOUS
FIVE
1. Setting High (But
Appropriate) Expectations
2. Nurturance
3. Modeling
4. Reasoning
5. Empowerment

Do The Fabulous 5
work in school?
Kathryn R. Wentzel, “Are
effective teachers like good
parents? Teaching styles and
student adjustment in early
adolescents,” Child
Development, 2002, 73:287-
301.

Wentzel found that:
Teachers who used the
Fabulous 5:
•Have high expectations for
students
•Set clear rules
•Are nurturing
•Are fair (use democratic
communication)
•Model motivation for learning.

Wentzel found that:
Have students who showed
the best character outcomes:
•Have prosocial and achievement
motives
•Have a sense of personal mastery
and control
•Engage in more prosocial behavior
•Get higher grades.

WENTZEL’s conclusion:
Good teachers do what good
parents do.
A separate study of London schools,
Michael Rutter’s Fifteen Thousand
Hours, reached the same
conclusion:
“Good schools are like good
families.”

HOW TO CREATE FAMILIES
AND SCHOOLS OF
CHARACTER?
•The “Fabulous Five” give us
a skeleton—a general
framework of evidence-
based practices.
•But they don’t give us the
specific, concrete practices
that show how to
implement the Fabulous 5.

WHAT
WOULD the
FABULOUS 5
LOOK LIKE IN
SCHOOLS?

performance character (needed for best work);
moral character (needed for best relationships)

SCHOOLS OF
CHARACTER
Develop moral character
(best ethical self) and
performance character
(best work) through an
ethical learning
community.

An ethical
learning
community is a
partnership of
staff, students,
parents, and the
wider
community.

•Is developed with input (voice)
from staff, students, and parents
•Expresses the school’s core moral
values (respect, kindness, etc.)
and performance values (doing
our best, never giving up…)
•Is written in the “We” voice.
59
THE SCHOOL “WAY”

THE PLACE WAY
At Place School, we pursue
excellence in scholarship and
character.
We celebrate and honor each
other by being respectful, honest,
kind, and fair.
We give our best inside and
outside the classroom.
This is who we are, even when
no one is watching.

Classroom
Compacts for
Excellence
1. All teachers work with their
students during the first 3 weeks
of school to create a classroom
Compact for Excellence.
2. The Compact shapes the
classroom culture. It lays the
foundation for everything else.

• If we want kids to
develop
responsibility, they
have to have
responsibility.

“The heart
learns what
the hand
does.”
—Gandhi
In character
education, it’s
often most
effective to
begin with
“the hand.”

The Need for Directed Practice
to Develop the “Hand”
Human beings develop habits of
good behavior by repeatedly
acting in good ways until it
becomes natural and even easy to
do so—and unnatural to do the
opposite.

Practice
Kindness
At the start of the day, all students take
out their Good Deeds Journal and write:
A good deed I did yesterday . . .
A good deed I will do today . . .
In all subjects, teachers make a
connection to the good deeds theme.

•Young people develop
character by what they see,
what they hear, and what
they are repeatedly led to
do.
•Directed practice is the
most important part.
—James Stenson, Compass: A Handbook of Parent
Leadership

TRANSFORMATIVE
CHARACTER EDUCATION
How to do deep character education, with
the potential to transform the culture of a
school and the character of students?

Hilltop
Elementary
School
(ages 5-11)
Case Study
• Hilltop students were becoming
increasingly disrespectful toward adults
and peers.
• Principal Geri Branch: "The pressure on
me as principal was to be tougher. But
we began to realize that this was a far
deeper problem than discipline.
• “We needed to change the idea of
what students considered 'cool'—from
disrespectful to respectful."

How did this principal
get her staff to commit
to character ed?
•For summer
reading, Principal
Gerry Branch gave
all teachers a copy
of Educating for
Character.

How did this principal
get her staff to commit
to character ed?
•This gave everyone
a shared
understanding of
what a
comprehensive
approach involved.

The premise of the
Comprehensive Approach:
• Every interaction, every
experience of the day,
affects a student’s values
and character, for good or
for ill.

In its first faculty meeting of the new school
year, the principal and the staff
discussed the book—and decided that
comprehensive character education
was the best way to try to change the
culture of their school.

How did Hilltop
implement the 12
strategies of the
comprehensive
approach?

Hilltop’s
Parent
Involvement
Principal Branch invited
parents to meetings to get
their response to the idea of
becoming “a school of
character”?
She asked
them, “What
virtues do
you think
the school
should
teach?”
Branch and teachers wrote
weekly letters to parents
about what they were
doing in character
education.

2.
CREATING A CARING
SCHOOL COMMUNITY
(Positive schoolwide
culture)
“We want all of our
students to feel valued
and connected.”

Hilltop’s
Strategies
for Creating
a Caring
School
Community
We try to make sure
that every child has a
friend in school.
We work on building a
caring community in
every classroom.

We now begin each academic
year with our "New School
Year's Day Assembly."
We introduce new staff and new students.
We celebrate being together as a family.
We review schoolwide rules about respect,
responsibility, and safety.
I ask the children, “Write down the goals
you will work on in the new school year.”

To build positive
peer relations,
each classroom
has a younger
“Buddy Class.”

3.
CLASS MEETINGS
(Democratic environment)
“We ask every teacher to use the class
meeting to teach children the school’s
10 virtues and give them the
experience of democratic
participation.”

“We use
the class
meeting to
. . .”
Help children get to know
each other and discover their
similarities and differences.
Give each other compliments.
Set up the rules that will help
us live together.

“We use
the class
meeting to
. . .”
Teach conversation skills like
listening.
Empower them to be
problem-solvers: “How can
we work together to solve this
problem?” (such as someone
being left out of games).

4.
REFLECTION TIMES
(Ethical reflection)
“Teachers use a Levels of
Respect and Responsibility
chart to have students
reflect on their behavior
during the day.”

Levels of Respect
and Responsibility
•Level 4: Respectful, Responsible, Helps Others.
•Level 3: Respectful and Responsible.
•Level 2: Works or Listens When Reminded.
•Level 1: Not Working or Listening.
•Level 0: Bothering Others.

Teachers ask, at
different times:
• “What level do you
think you, individually,
are working at right
now?”
(Students give
themselves a private
level score by putting
fingers on their leg

Teachers ask, at
different times:
• “What level do you
think the whole class is
working at?”

Teachers ask, at
different times:
• “What level did you
feel we were working
at during math?”

“Instead of an adult saying, ‘You
really need to work on respect
and responsibility,’ we’re asking
the children, ‘How do you think
you’re doing?’
“In this way, we’re laying the
foundation for independent self-
reflection.”

5.
A CHARACTER-BASED
APPROACH
TO DISCIPLINE
“We want children to understand why they
should behave in a certain way.”

•“75% of our approach to
discipline is now focused
on teaching social skills.
•“A major part of that is
teaching good manners.
We practice manners—
saying please and thank
you, holding the door for
someone coming behind
you.”

6.
TALK-IT-OUT
SPACE
(Conflict
resolution)
“A space in the
classroom where you
can go to solve a
problem you are having
with one other person.”

Steps to follow in the
TALK-IT-OUT SPACE
1. Stop and cool off.
2. Talk and listen.
3. Find out what you both need.
4. Think of ways to solve the problem.
5. Choose a solution you both like—and
tell the teacher.

7.
JUSTICE COMMITTEE
(Schoolwide culture, democratic environment)
Provides further experience with democratic process—by
giving students an opportunity to help solve school
problems that haven’t been solved by other procedures.

The principal oversees the Committee.
Students in grades 4 to 6 serve. Service is
considered part of school citizenship.
Teachers choose a different student from
their class every 3 weeks to take a turn.
Any student or staff member can present
a problem for consideration. The Justice
Committee then brainstorms solutions.
The Justice Committee’s recommendations
go to the principal for her approval.

AN EXAMPLE:
Many Hilltop students eat part of their
lunch outside during the nice weather.
But litter on the school grounds was making
a lot of extra work for the custodian. He
took his concern to the Justice Committee,
which recommended that all classrooms
discuss this problem.
As a result, there was a schoolwide
renewal of the commitment to keep
the grounds clean.

8.
A VIRTUE A MONTH
(Schoolwide culture)
“For the first 3 years we
focused just on respect and
responsibility. That became
too routine. We now do a
different virtue each month.”

HILLTOP’S 10
MONTHLY
VIRTUES
•Hard work
•Cooperation
•Citizenship
•Kindness
•Tolerance
•Fairness
•Courage
•Honesty
•Courage
•Self-discipline

9.
CURRICULAR
INTEGRATION (Character
through the curriculum)
“Hilltop teachers now regularly
integrate character education
into reading, writing, social
studies, and physical
education.”

10.
RECOGNITION
FOR
GOOD CHARACTER
(Schoolwide culture and
Caring beyond the
classroom)

“As a society, we suffer from
thinking, ‘What will I get for doing
this?’ So at Hilltop we give social
recognition for good character
rather than material rewards.”
“We are constantly thanking
children for being courteous and
considerate.”

Celebration Assemblies
“We also have Celebration Assemblies that give
children the opportunity to perform—to do
musical recitals, skits, plays, and readings of
poems and stories. Many of these performances
highlight the virtue of the month.”
“Student performances are then repeated at
community events, other schools, and nursing
homes, and in this way become a form of
community service.”

11.
CHARACTER
AS PART OF THE
REPORT CARD
(Classroom/School
wide culture)
“Our school district now
includes 6 Lifelong
Learning Skills as part of
a student’s Report Card.”

Lifelong Learning Skills
4=Consistently 3=Usually
2=Occasionally 1=Rarely
RESPECT ___ COOPERATION ____
RESPONSIBILITY ___ PROBLEM-SOLVING ___
REFLECTION/ INDEPENDENT
SELF-AWARENESS ___ WORK HABITS ___

12.
A STRONG PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY
(Schoolwide culture)
“Taking time to reflect on our character program has
been transformational for us as adults.”

THE BENEFITS OF A
STRONG
PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNITY
• “We take the first half
of every faculty
meeting to discuss
what's working in our
classrooms and what
isn't working—and to
plan for the next
month."

How Hilltop
Has Changed
• “Over the past 10 years, the
climate of our school has
improved so much that almost
everyone who visits our
school comments on it. Our
students’ test scores have
steadily improved. Discipline
problems have steadily
declined.”

How Hilltop
Has Changed
• “Peer pressure is now
on our side—it’s cool
to be respectful. You
can hear Hilltop
students telling new
students how we treat
each other here.”

A HILLTOP
TEACHER:
“I was opposed to doing
character education at first.
But then I saw the change
in the kids.
“I saw the change in how
staff related to each other.
“We are a different school
now.”

CREATING AN ENVIRONENT OF
CHARACTER—AND PROTECTING KIDS
FROM TOXIC INFLUENCES

Explain Why You Set Limits
“We want you to be able to use good media.
But bad media can stay in your mind for a very
long time and affect you in ways you may not
even be aware of. Too much screen time also
has bad effects—on sleep, mood, and
behavior.

Explain Why You Set Limits
“Parents who care about their kids set
limits on these things. It’s because we
love you.”

If You Have Religious Faith,
Share It With Your Students
Teens who regularly practice a faith and rate
their religion as important to them are:
 More involved in service activities.
 Less likely to steal, be violent, or use drugs
and alcohol.
 Less likely to have sex.
—Child Trends, “Religious Involvement and Children’s
Well-Being” www.childtrends.org

1) Sin
2) Lack of a personal relationship with God
3) Absence of a personal prayer life.
Without prayer, God will be an abstract idea, not a Person.
—Father Hugh Thwaites
3 Reasons for Falling Away from the Faith

WHAT DOES
NURTURANCE* LOOK
LIKE IN THE
CLASSROOM?
* #2 in the Fabulous 5

NURTURANCE IN THE
CLASSROOM
•Teacher and students
know, respect, and care
about each other.
•Everyone feels like a valued
member of the group.

No one ever went wrong by being polite.
No Put-Downs
Compliments Spoken Here
Positive Attitude
Respect for Others
Hard Work
The Golden Rule rules.
“If a student forgets a rule, I knock on the pertinent
sign—or go over to his/her desk.”
- Hal Urban

WHAT DOES MODELING* LOOK
LIKE IN THE CLASSROOM?
* #3 in the Fabulous 5

TEACHER AS MODEL:
Self-Inventory

Do I warmly greet each student?
Do I seek other opportunities to connect
with each student?
Am I well-prepared for class? On time?
Do I model patience and courtesy, even
under stress?
Do I treat my all students impartially?
Do I challenge all of them to do their best
work?

Have Guest Speakers
(include graduates from your school)
Have your students ask:
1. How did you get the job you have?
2. What do you find satisfying about your work?
Difficult?
3. What skills do you need to do it well?
4. How did you develop those skills?
5. How can someone succeed in today’s world and still
be an honest and good person?
6. What advice would you give students as they
prepare for a job or career in the 21st century?

Giraffe Heroes
Project, giraffe.org

Expose students to positive role models through:
Good Movies (TeachWithMovies.com)
Good Documentaries
Good Books (see Books That Build Character by William Kilpatrick
and Gregory and Suzanne Wolfe; also www.readbrightly.com).
The more kids are immersed in goodness, the more they’ll be
attracted to it.

NAME & TITLE OF THE SEMINAR
IWANTMYCERTIFICATE@GMAIL.COM

STOP TEACHING SUBJECTS, START TEACHING CHILDREN (July 13)

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