How-To Articles for Public Schools, Parents, and Community and Faith Leaders

Teaching Hints
What's Working - Practical Suggestions from Teachers on the Front Lines

• Preparing Lessons That Change Lives - Checklist for presenters.
• Authenticity: Opening Your Hearts - The ins and outs of sharing personal life experiences.
• Using People Stories to Change Lives
• Instilling Character in Students Who Learn Differently - How character education may differ for those with learning challenges.
• Teaching Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Instructional Strategies and Practices - This recent document (2004) gives practical ideas that have been proven to work. Well-documented.
• Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
• Teaching Literature to Change Lives - How to teach character, life-change and success through literature and language arts.

School-Wide Practices

• Building Character At Hilltop Elementary - How a "National School of Character" made it happen.**
• Wisdom Search: Alternative to In School Suspension
• Acts of Kindness - Ideas for Teachers and Administrators
• Program for High School Seniors

Character Formation

• Forty Developmental Assets - Building blocks of healthy development that help young people grow up healthy, caring, and responsible.
• Stages of Moral Development - Dr. Thomas Lickona describes the five stages of moral reasoning we go through on the path to moral maturity.
• Instilling Compassion in Students
• Connecting With Boys: Closing the Asset Gap - How boys are falling behind, and what we can do about it.
• Resources on Fighting Prejudice and Racism
• Preparing Lessons that Form Character

Improving the School Environment

• Fifty Ways to Show Kids You Care - A great idea list!
• Prevent Bullying, Promote Kindness: 20 Things All Schools Can Do - Dr. Thomas Lickona
• Climate Change: Caring Schools Heat Up Student Potential - How schools can become more caring and encouraging.
• Preventing Peer Cruelty - Dr. Thomas Lickona suggests thirteen ways.
• A Case for Uniforms - A research-based article on the benefits of uniforms.
• Making Sense of Tolerance and Diversity - Handling controversial issues with delicacy and wisdom.

Character Traits

• The Content of Our Character - Dr. Thomas Lickona describes ten essential virtues, which are "taught by nearly all philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions."**
• Honesty - Dr. Hal Urban motivates us toward "respect in its highest form."
• Modesty Revisited - Author and essayist Wendy Shalit challenges us to reconsider a lost virtue.*
• Words That Hurt; Words That Heal: How to Choose Words Wisely and Well - Rabbi Joseph Telushkin helps us define gossip and slander in practical contexts and proposes a national "Speak No Evil" day.*
• Ethics, One Day at a Time - Rabbi Telushkin suggests seven days of good deeds "that can transform and elevate your life, and the lives of all those around you, one day at a time."*
• Inspiring Wisdom-Seekers - Transforming Reluctant Students into Lifelong Learners.
• What Makes for Success? - Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's International, helps us define and achieve success.*
• Helping Others - Commemorating 9/11

Destructive Attitudes and Practices

• Cigarettes: Overview and Links
• Marijuana: To Smoke or Not to Smoke?
• Television: The Cyclops That Eats Books - Delightful and disturbing article by award-winning novelist Larry Woiwode.*
• Saving Childhood - New York Post movie critic Michael Medved discusses the problems with media and popular culture and offers solutions.*
• Why Do Shoplifters Steal? - Peter Berlin, Executive Director of Shoplifters Alternative, tells why people shoplift. By understanding the motivations, we can better help with prevention.
• Wealth, Well Being and the New American Dream - Social Psychologist David G. Myers demonstrates the failure of materialism to bring happiness, and challenges us to pursue a new course.

Motivation

• Quotes on Character
• Educating Smarter Criminals
• Are We Living in a Moral Stone Age? Philosophy professor Christina Hoff Sommers attacks moral relativism as a root of students' moral confusion.*
• Pursuing Character Education - Meeting plan for character ed coordinator to motivate and introduce staff to a new curriculum.

Athletics and Character

• Rules to Play by On and Off the Playing Field - Former NFL quarterback Jeff Kemp promotes humility, honesty, leadership, vision, perseverance and spirit.*

Parenting

• Make Deposits in the Love Bank - Part 1 (Faith-based)
• Make Deposits in the Love Bank - Part 2 (Faith-based)
• The Real Cause of Violent Crime: The Breakdown of the Family - What parents can learn from the upbringing of violent criminals.*

How Communities Develop Character

• Hampton Leads in Youth Engagement - How one city involves 600 young people a year in leadership, policy, and decision making.

Issues and Opportunities for Families

• CASA Volunteers Give Children a Voice
• The Many Strengths that Come from Failure
• Second Chances through Community Service
• Parenting Advice Video Sends Wrong Message - Making points with violence can set unintended precedents.
• Kids Jazzed on Energy Drinks
• Incarcerated Parents and Their Foster Kids
• Feeding our Future, One School at a Time - Opinion Piece on School Lunch Programs
• Seven Steps to a Compassionate Child
• Kids and the Very Dangerous Choking Game
• Running Away from Home is Risky Business
• Advice to a Parent of a Teen Struggling with Drug Addiction
• The Big Dangerous: Boys Playing with Fire
• Silence is the Ally of Suicide: Send It Packing
• What to Do with a Homeless Teenager
• Raising Kids in a Different Kind of World - Coping with terrorism, natural disaster, etc.
• The Day Big Tobacco Stole my Son
• Guilty after Proven Innocent - How the Innocent End Up with Criminal Records
• What a Terrible Parent the State Makes - Issues in Foster Care
• Let's Stop the Exploitation of Children - Issues in the Sex Trade
• On Boys and High School Dropout Rates
• Suspensions, Zero Tolerance and the Woodshed
• Keeping My Boys on the Straight and Narrow - On Curfews and Safe Communities
• Deadbeat Dads, Their Children, The Cost to Society
• The Bank of Mom and Dad - Achieving Financial Independence
• Bullying in the Teen Years
• On Teen Sex and Condoms

Books on Character

• Comments on Books - Our personal comments on books that are motivating and informing us on developing character in our students, our children and ourselves.

*Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College

**Reprinted by permission of Dr. Thomas Lickona and the Center for the Fourth and Fifth RS

*Previously we published on this site a poem called "How do you live your dash?" We recently learned that this poem actually entitled, "Tha Dash," was written by Linda M. Ellis of Linda's Lyrics, http://www.lindaslyrics.com/ and that Ms. Ellis owns and has registered the copyright to her poem. We are glad that we can now credit Ms. Ellis as the author and copyright owner of "Tha Dash."