Character Education: Teaching Respect, Responsibility, and Citizenship
Selected Resources
A companion to the October 2001 Satellite Town Meeting
Networks for Parents, Businesses, Schools, and
Organizations
Teaching children values such as respect, responsibility and good citizenship become just as important to learning as high standards in reading and math. Schools integrating character education in their classrooms are witnessing fewer disciplinary referrals, improved school attendance, and fewer drop-outs, which all lend to a safer environment for learning. A number of organizations offer educators resources for promoting the ideals needed to drive students towards behavioral and academic excellence. Below are a few.
The Character Education Partnership (CEP), a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of organizations and individuals, points out in its "Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education" that ?the school must recruit parents and community members as full partners in the character-building effort.? Each year, CEP highlights promising practices by schools and districts across the country that excel in these principles. This year?s selections have been compiled into the publication 2001 National Schools of Character.
Equipping schools and families with solutions for building character, the National Character Education Center offers two online resources: a free monthly newsletter entitled Values in Action! The Best Ethics in Education, and an extensive search engine of practical strategies. In addition, the center just released Character Lessons for Life, a 52-lesson plan for teaching teenagers on respect and responsibility.
The Center for Civic Education administers a wide range of K-12 programs that foster values fundamental to American constitutional democracy. Among them, the ?We the People? series, which focuses on the U.S. constitution and Bill of Rights, instructs students on the importance of their civic participation. Another series, ?The Foundations of Democracy,? explores democratic principles such as responsibility and justice in a curriculum that draws upon several disciplines from political to environmental science. The Partnership for Family Involvement in Education To encourage businesses, community and religious organizations, and families to support education, the Department of Education administers the Partnership and offers resources, ideas, funding, and conferences relevant to family involvement in education.
National Parent Information Network The National Parent Information Network (NPIN) is a project of the ERIC system, which is administered by the National Library of Education. The mission of NPIN is to provide access to research-based information about the process of parenting, and about family involvement in education. The site features a Virtual Library, the Parents AskERIC question-answering service and the PARENTING-L electronic discussion list.
Last updated—April 30, 2003 (pjh) |
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