Teach Character Education to Manage Classroom

Dealing With Root Issues Changes Class Atmosphere

Oct 20, 2009 Lynda Allison

Students' issues are rooted in three commonly believed myths: choices are without consequences, youth have no value, and they have no power to change their circumstances.

In "What is Character Education?" Nancy Steele and Garfield Gini-Newman define character education as "the deliberate effort to develop virtues that are good for the individual and good for society. Character Education views the social, emotional, and ethical development of young people as equally necessary and important as their academic development."

Light Up Your World is a unique character education curriculum with interactive activities that engage learners and scaffold learning. More importantly Light Up dispels commonly believed misconceptions and helps students know and understand that they are valued, their good choices bring positive outcomes and they have the power to positively change their environment.

Three one and half hour sessions reveal to students how their attitudes, behaviour and actions, stemming from wrong beliefs about them and other people, bring about negative outcomes. Light Up object lessons are tangible demonstrations that bring an understanding of how life choices will determine their future.

Light and Darkness

The light and darkness session illustrates to students how the choices they make are like seeds they sow. Good seed (choice or behaviour) reaps good fruit (consequences or response) that grows a good harvest (positive emotions). Like gardeners who desire a certain outcome, students must plant the right seed. If they wish a positive outcome, they cannot plant seeds of poor choices. Planting tomato seeds does not produce sunflowers.

Using the easily understood imagery of a gardener, youth come to understand that planting seeds of selfishness produces the fruit of isolation and rejection and a harvest of loneliness. Planting the seed of truth produces trust and the planter feels confident. Students are asked what outcomes they would like to experience and shown that bad choices cannot produce the outcomes they desire.

Great Value

Life circumstances and words often communicate to students that they do not have value. Youth see darkness in their schools, communities and world in the forms of lying, cheating, stealing and drugs. They understand the sting of negative attitudes, rumours, name calling and bullying.

In an email interview conducted on October 10, 2009, Lisa Sanchez, author of Light Up Your World, shared how the session on value has been helping students. “There was an angry young man who was acting as if he did not want to be there. Near the end of the lesson there was a dramatic change in the young man. At the end of the day, the boy came back to the classroom to say that some kids in the school had made up lies about him and spread them around the school. He was rejected by everyone, had fallen into a deep depression and he could not get out of it. He did not want to live anymore and was contemplating death. During the value session, he began to see and believe that he is valuable. He said ‘it was like he had been set free from a dark prison.’”

Students learn that their value does not come from their appearance, possessions or performance but their value is inborn. Once they comprehend their value, they can impart value to the people in their homes, classrooms, clubs and communities. An object lesson on false labels that are affixed to people using the names they commonly hear people called in the school yard, clearly demonstrates the power of words. During this sessions, participants put into practice words that speak the truth of a person’s value to them. Understanding the value of people is the root of respect.

Making a Difference – Changing the World

Often students who are in trouble at school are leaders who do not know their value and have become derailed by their choices or the choices of other people. They are in need of good mentors who understand how to impart value, the importance of making good choices and demonstrate how to step into leadership. “Young people make many world changing choices every day. Light Up prepares and equips young people to make a powerful change to their world,” says the author.

In the session on making a difference, students learn that since they “have the power to make a choice, they have the power to make a change.” Implementing what they have learned, they start to personally and corporately change the atmosphere of their environments. Using the principle from the movie, Pay it Forward, they choose three people who they will affirm, befriend, help and lead. Youth are challenged to listen to the needs of people in their life and find ways to meet those needs.

As a class, students choose a project that will influence their school in a positive way. They might create and post posters with positive messages that reinforce what they learned in the sessions, embrace a younger class and share one of the Light Up object lessons, organize staff appreciation days or local/global service projects. Breaking the project down into manageable roles, students are assigned functions according to their gifts and given tasks with a deadline so their plans are implemented into action. In so doing, they begin to live out their purpose and destiny - to positively influence their homes, classrooms and school.

The Firestarter Youth Empowerment Program by the FreeChild Project provides additional interactive activities such as "Crossing the Line" wherein participants explore their diversity and numerous resources specifically for youth to effect social change. In particular, the tools in their "Youth Voice Toolbox" "identify a number of innovative practices, practical considerations and critical concepts that are focused on engaging Youth Voice, particularly among historicall disengaged young people."

Character Education Must Deal With Root Issues

Teachers feel disappointment when students demolish their well constructed lessons by bringing negative attitudes to, and disrupting, the class because they know the importance of education to their future success. Light Up Your World character education helps students deal with the root issues and provides teachers with a language to correct wrong beliefs, attitudes and behaviours and prompt students to learn and become influencers of positive change.

Source:

Gini-Newman, Garfield and Steele, Nancy. "What is Character Education?" TVOparents.com

Sanchez, Lisa. Light Up Your World

The copyright of the article Teach Character Education to Manage Classroom in Educational Issues is owned by Lynda Allison. Permission to republish Teach Character Education to Manage Classroom in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Lisa Sanchez, Author of Light Up, husband Miguel	Words have Power to Impart Value	Plant Sunflower Seeds to Reap Sunflowers
Choices Bring Light and Darkness	Light Up Character Education Curriculum