"Many college-prep schools are
now embracing their roles
as the first lines of defense
against the larger ethical crisis."
INVENTIVE PROGRAMS
Nationally, the nonprofit Character
Education Partnership (character.org) is
a network recognizing schools that provide
a learning environment that supports
building positive character traits,
such as fostering respect, making moral
choices, engaging parents and building
accountability into the school community.
Yew Chung’s Second Step is not the
only approach to character development
and ethics education. And college-bound
private school students are not the only
participants in related programs.
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
at Santa Clara University offers the
Character Education Framework, a set
of eight “themes” that define character
virtues and moral standards for behavior.
The themes are inherently based on action
and personal commitment: Change
requires effort, courage requires fortitude,
kindness requires empathy, and so on.
Reading plays an essential role in Markkula’s
program. It provides students with
novels, poems, short stories and even
folktales to put forth ethical dilemmas
and moral choices. Santa Clara County’s
Office of Alternative Education also uses
the program to engage with at-risk students,
some of whom have spent time in
Juvenile Hall.
In San Francisco, the Collaborative
Life Skills program, which operates out of
the UCSF Department of Psychiatry, provides
schools with a research-driven program
that combines in-school classes for
children and small working groups for
parents. The nine-week program requires
buy-in from each school’s administration
and guidance staff, and uses a series of
classroom and home “challenges” that
train students and parents to model and
practice collaboration and cooperation. It
stresses the importance of using positive
language, rather than punishment, to reward
effort and build positive behaviors
among children with attention and behavior
issues in class.
This mingling of teaching and behavioral
workshopping appears to be on the
rise throughout the region.
Sheri Glucoft Wong, a Berkeley-based
family therapist who consults to schools
across the Bay Area says that her clients are
integrating social-emotional learning programs
into the spectrum of academic life.
“It’s not just reading, writing and
arithmetic,” she explains. “Schools are
asking for more support with what happens
on the playground,” she says, “They
are starting to think about playground
staff as educators, and about free play as
part of the educational experience. They
want it to be constructive as part of developing
character.”
Wong says that kids need to know
they’re special and unique—and at the
same time, that they’re like everyone
else. That may sound contradictory, but
what she wants to encourage is empathy
by stressing that feelings transcend age
and gender. She emphasizes the importance
of involving the parents, who need
to know “when to give each message,
and to be sure your kids get both.”
Jorgenson, the Almaden Country Day
School Head, says that ethics and character
education is “infused” into daily life, and
that parental participation is not optional.
“Buy-in is critical,” he says. “Teachers,
parents, the administration, and the children
need to understand and appreciate
and abide by a school’s norms for character
and learning. Otherwise, in my experience,
no program will be truly effective.”
In practice, he notes, “the best character
education programs are so deeply assimilated
in schools that they’re virtually
invisible. But the results are very visible—
you visit a campus and encounter young
people who clearly feel safe and at ease
in their own skin, who are confident and
poised, who accept and welcome differences
among their peers, who are respectful
and kind and caring.”
Jorgenson also cites research-based curricula
as foundational to his approach
to ethics education. This includes the
Character and Competence program developed
by Utah-based psychologist A.
Lynn Scoresby; and the “conscious discipline”
methodology advanced by developmental
psychologist Rebecca Bailey.
NAVIGATING PAST COLLAPSE
The larger question still demands a clear
answer: How is it that amidst this bur-
August/September 2019 51
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