Our Story

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Building Children of Character -- Our Story

Our character program is not one that was purchased...it evolved. We were witnessing the difference in children's and parent's attitudes toward the school and educators. It was obvious that discipline was taking more and more of our time and the infractions were more serious. Language being used by the children and parents was oftentimes rude or vulgar; said without any shame. We knew something needed to be done to improve our situation.

Martha Walker, a teacher on my staff, shared with me a copy of the book Silver Boxes by Florence Littauer. Reading it had a profound affect on my life and profession. It is about the power of the spoken word and what an influence our words can have on someone's life, either positive or negative. Our words should be kind and encouraging to others...a gift...a silver box, with a bow on top.

I decided that this could be a beginning...teaching the children to speak only kind words to each other. We did a front hall bulletin board displaying wrapped silver boxes with beautiful silver bows on top...gifts. Examples of kind words or phrases were written and placed around the gifts. Small, magnetic, mirrored boxes with bows were given to each teacher at school during an assembly, where I explained to the children about our theme for the semester...kind words...gifts to each other. The teachers were told to put the "silver box" in full view to everyone who entered their classroom. This would be a daily reminder to speak only kind, encouraging words to each other throughout the day.

I was amazed at the difference this made in our school. You could just feel the difference. Now the question was..."What else can we do?" A first grade teacher, Brenda Russell, shared with me that at a Christian school where she previously worked they had taught "character words". I asked her to bring her material and sure enough here were all these wonderful character words with their definitions and a scripture verse to support them. I knew that since we were a public school we could not use the scripture, but that did not keep us from teaching the character word and the principle behind it.

During teacher in-service days at the beginning of the next school year, I shared with the teachers my idea of teaching good character, much the same as "words of kindness". My staff was very interested. I gave them a long list of words to choose from and asked them to prioritize them in the order of greatest importance to the school setting. We decided to do one word a month, because with young children we needed to emphasize and teach the definition so the children would truly understand and internalize its meaning. I told the teachers that this was just a beginning...we would all learn together. I asked them to teach the word and definition and whatever else they did was up to them. As the year went on I began to see wonderful bulletin board ideas, lessons, and stories being shared that supported the teaching of good character. Each year we learn more ways to integrate teaching character throughout the curriculum and discipline of our school. Our character program is now our "school culture" and supports everything we do.

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