“Character Compass”

by Emily Weinstein

Last week, the CMEI hosted former PZer Scott Seider as he spoke about his new book, Character Compass. His talk covered broad issues of character education and outlined his experience studying three Boston schools that have made character development a focus.  PZer and HGSE doctoral student Emily Weinstein attended the talk and reflected on Seider’s ideas and her key takeaways.

Seider began by describing the field of character education and the multifaceted meaning of “character” itself. He described the definitional challenge posed by studying character education; people within and across fields have different conceptions of what character means and whether it refers to psychological, social, emotional, behavioral and/or cognitive competencies. Seider explained that while No Child Left Behind was detrimental to character education and drew attention away from ethical and moral development in schools in the early 2000’s, there has been a resurgence of energy around the topic in the last few years. He highlighted an important transition—from simply getting “to” college to getting “to and through” college.” The energy around helping students achieve and persist in college has reinvigorated character education in schools.

Seider’s talk focused on a study of three Boston schools, all of which have character education as part of their missions. At Boston Prep, for example, a new charter school with character education as an explicit component of the school, Seider observed school-based ethics training in action. The school’s core curriculum includes a weekly class in ethical philosophy, which has a different focus in each grade. For instance, in 6th grade, students focus on learning and understanding concepts, such as truth. Across middle school, the course content becomes more complex and students read texts from Gandhi and consider the actions of historical figures like Harvey Milk. In high school, the course pushes students to form their own definitions and principles. Seider quoted one student who explained that whereas middle school ethics class might be more like a restaurant, the high school version is like a kitchen: students take an active role in creating and developing their own understandings in ways that fit with their lives. Before graduation, students complete a capstone project, writing their own code of ethics.

The two other schools Seider observed and studied also included an emphasis on character as a part of their mission statements. He compared the three systems, looking at the different approaches (i.e., emphasizing moral, civic, and/or performance character) and explored how the school’s emphasis influenced activities and actions and, in turn, student outcomes.

Seider noted that one effect of ethics class is the infusion of ethical language into student and faculty conversation, from the classrooms to the sports fields. Seider also explained that middle and high school students are forming and solidifying key facets of their identities, creating schemas and exploring their self-concepts. The ethics courses and character education program complements and energizes schema building, providing an additional layer to students’ consideration of questions such as “who am I and how do I act?”

Seider’s mixed methods approach was another strength of his presentation; he shared both quantitative data capturing salient trends as well as rich qualitative stories based on more than 93 class observations and  student interviews. The idea that ethics was infused in the language of these schools is compelling in and of itself; students (and teachers and parents) in schools with formal and required ethics courses are regularly engaged in discussions on character, ethics, and morality. In addition, taking valuable class time for character education further signals the importance of these concepts. As the schools are relatively young, it will be exciting to follow their programs – and Scott’s work – over the next few years. Scott’s discussion of his work provided a meaningful contribution to the ongoing discussion at HGSE about civic and moral education and, of course, it was exciting to hear about such timely work from a fellow Ed School graduate and former PZer.

GoodWork in Scotland: Billy Zima and Identity Artworks

by Margot Locker

Billy Zima is the Director of Identity Artworks in Scotland, working with challenging youth in schools countrywide. Billy began using the Value Sort with students and teachers to begin conversations on values and beliefs in classrooms, a tool many have found valuable tool for self-actualization and beginning a dialogue on GoodWork. Billy’s approach with Identity Artworks is not simply to target students but to begin the GoodWork discussion on 5 different levels within the high schools he works with:

1. The Headmaster (Principal)

2. The Depute Heads (SMT – Senior Management Team)

3. Specialty staff (ASN – Additional Support Needs) – who in time share the knowledge with mainstream teaching staff

4. High Tariff Students

5. Regular Students

Recently, Billy filled us in on a session he led with five Additional Support Needs teachers and two Identity Artworks facilitators. He read the group “Looking Good” from the GoodWork Toolkit, the story of Ray, a middle-aged history teacher who struggles to hold students accountable in an environment of grade inflation and pressure from the administration to make his students look successful.  The teachers reflected on the narrative and the broader implications of GoodWork in their community.

Teachers commented on how this dilemma felt “familiar,” one teacher remarking “You want the best for the child…above everything…but you also want your school to look good you, want these other things.” They discussed the tension Ray faced as a teacher and what that means. Many teachers in the group described that they felt compelled to provide everything for their students; academic instruction, emotional support, and more, and they are unsure of where to draw the line.

Some felt that Ray was thinking solely as a teacher, one commenting “that’s my bottom line when things are really going badly at the end of the day. I trained to be a teacher but he’s trying to only be the teacher…I think now one more way to expect the teacher to be everything to the child. We’re expected to be the parent, the social worker, the counselor.”  This took the conversation toward a reflection on the pilot program these teachers were a part of, working to help students who are behaviorally challenged to prepare to enter mainstream courses. The group spent the duration of the session thinking through their pilot couched in the context of the narrative they had read and what their roles and responsibilities are as teachers.Billy will continue to work with this school, next presenting to students, hopefully using a combination of value sort and narratives to guide discussions.

Billy also had groups of students and teachers complete the value sort as a vehicle to ignite GoodWork discussion. He recently led a two-day series of workshops and gave the value sort cards to around 120 people 3 groups of approximately 40 people. He shared some reactions individuals had to the Value Sort:

“I’ve never had to think like this before”.

“They never taught me this in school.”

“I wish I had know this about myself a long time ago.”

Stay tuned: Billy and Identity Artworks continue to spread GoodWork into schools, companies, and prisons in the future. We are excited to hear more as this work progresses!

Materiality as a means to deepen understanding in social sciences in high schools

by Aaron Faver

In November of 2009, I was lucky enough to participate in an event put on by the PZ team from Harvard working in conjunction with the CASIE Institute out of Atlanta, GA,  The event, held in Washington, DC, was called “Educating for Today and Tomorrow.”  At this symposium, Dr. Gardner spoke on a Sunday morning in what became popularly known as the “sermon on the mount,” primarily called this because the Washington International School where it was held was, in fact, on a mount, but also because of both the revolutionary nature of the ideas expressed by Dr. Gardner, and the passion with which he spoke about them.  Among these were the three E’s that the GoodWork team at Harvard works so hard to implement in the educational community at large.  These three E’s are excellence, engagement, and ethics.

I am currently lucky enough to participate in a great opportunity for my students that I wanted to share with everyone that involve these three visionary ideas for American education.  The Remnant Trust, a collection of rare books, manuscripts, documents, and first edition books, is on display at a local university, West Texas A&M University.  Last year my class went to the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum to view these books and to have the opportunity to see and touch the books..  without gloves!  This year, that effort was extended by the Director, Dr. Baum, who is allowing high schools and junior high schools in the Panhandle to bring these books into the classroom and use them for a week at a time.  I wish all of you could see my students’ imaginations coming to life with questions about where the books had been, who had held them, whether or not they’d ever been aboard a ship, wondering as to whether or not they’d ever been in the presence of a king, etc.

The students respond to the age of these books, and in that way, they somehow become part of the books’ stories.  Some examples: a traveling judge’s copy of the “Magna Carta”, ca. 1341; Augustine’s “Confessions,” ca. 1491; Declaration of Independence, 1776; “Spirit of Laws” by Montesquieu, ca. 1752.  These are just a few examples.  If everyone would be interested in checking out more, take a look at this link!  My hope as an educator is that we can expand this enterprise to be a normal part of students’ experiences in the educational process from an earlier age (8th grade forward).  The experience can not be replicated by using modern technology.

Finally, I wanted to open up and ask you all for  new ideas and ways of integrating these types of instructional materials into day-to-day and week-to-week practices.  It’s not often that we, as educators, are able to teach students “textuality” while also dealing with “materiality”.  In Texas, we have a definitive curriculum to teach, and a highly limited amount of time to teach that curriculum within, as many of you know (meeting the demands of standardized testing). How do we incorporate these texts into a curriculum without adding “time-issue” burdens?

Good Goals

by Margot Locker

With the school year starting, we asked some of our “GoodWorkers” about their goals for the coming school year.   A busy and impressive group, with many exciting plans!  (To learn more about any of these initiatives, please feel free to write us at margot_locker@harvard.edu.)

Bloomsburg University, Pennsylvania:

The Bloomsburg University GoodWork Initiative is focused on advancing undergraduates’ understanding of what it means to do academic Good Work as college students as well as identifying strategies and developing resources to advance their ability to achieve Good Work. To this end, the BU Good Work Initiative seeks to find ways to integrate Good Work concepts into curricular and extracurricular activities at Bloomsburg University. We are energized by the positive response we have received from all members of our campus community including support from all Colleges (Business, Education, Liberal Arts, Science and Technology) and several key Offices on our campus (Dean of Students, Diversity and Retention, Student Affairs, Graduate Programs and Research). We will continue to develop GoodWork inspired programs, such as an “On Your Honor” conference, in the Spring of 2013.

Amy Maturin, Unity Charter School, New Jersey:

After getting acclimated with the GoodWork Toolkit last year and working, along with my 1st and 2nd grade students, to fully understand the concept of good work, I am hopeful that my former students will be implementing the conversations and vocabulary they learned last year in their new classrooms. My goal for my current class is to use the activities that we developed last year while revising with more understanding. I’m looking forward to my continued collaboration with the project and to see the conversations and understandings of a new set of children.

Design for Change, http://dfcworld.com/

Design for Change is excited to be collaborating on a unique service learning and design thinking curriculum with the Harvard’s GoodWork Team. We have worked together to seamlessly integrate vital GoodWork principles of ethics, excellence an engagement into each aspect of Design for Change. We will be launching the curriculum this fall providing access to tens of thousands of students and teachers across 35 different countries. We are excited to share the GoodWork framework with children around the globe, who are all saying “I CAN!”

Patricia Kievlan, Convent of the Sacred Heart High School, San Francisco

I’m in my second year as Director of Community Service at Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco, an all-girls Catholic high school celebrating its 125th school year. Our school has a long history of great work in philanthropy, and I hope to build on those existing partnerships with significantly more opportunities for direct service to our community here in San Francisco. Our students and faculty are eager to find new ways to serve: we do a lot of talking about needs in our community, one student said, but we don’t take a lot of action. This year, the 40 students in the Service Learning elective course will be planning new service activities on campus and will lead the charge for getting their classmates actively involved in their community on a weekly basis. We hope to use guiding questions from the GoodWork Toolkit (What constitutes GoodWork? Why is it important?) to inspire, guide, and evaluate the activities that we lead this year.

Ewa Suchecka, University of Warsaw

I work inthe Department of Education at the University of Warsaw. In my program there are 260 people – teachers and University students. The teachers are our students’ tutors from elementary schools, where they do their practices. I hope this year to give them the overview of GWP, (based on “Good Work. When Excellence and Ethics Meet.”, but also a little from “5 Minds for the future” and some articles on GoodWork from the website. On the basis of some narratives the participants will discuss what good work means to them, they’ll come up with their own definitions of GWanddiscuss the three Es, with the final goal to refer them to their own lives.I’ll also guide them to refer the 3 Es to the 4 major learning goals from the Toolkit.One of my goals is to guide them how to transfer what they’ve learnt about GW to implementing these ideas to children, in other words, to consider how to teach GW to children.

Deborah Coney, Bellevue School District

My goal as a 3rd grade teacher is to use the Good Work Toolkit to instill the E’s to my students through whole group discussion,  journal writing, and sharing. My hope at the end of the year is to demonstrate growth in their understanding of the 3 E’s and developing personal tools to live by for each child.

GoodWork Team

Here at the GoodWork Project, we are excited to work with such an energetic and diverse network of teachers. This year, we hope to get a solid sense of what is working and not working in the classroom through streamlined assessment and consistent check ins with teachers using the Toolkit. We are also excited to be working with two excellent elementary school teachers on our Elementary Toolkit so we can have a completed version by the end of this school year! We are looking forward to a great year and learning from all of you!

What are your goals for this school year?

When Ambition Trumps Ethics

by Howard Gardner

Below is an excerpt from Howard Gardner’s op-ed from The Washington Post:

On Monday, approximately 1,600 freshmen arrived at Harvard College. On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of spending 90 minutes with 20 of these students. They impressed me with their intellect but also with their empathy and willingness to listen to and learn from one another. They were excited by the opportunity to be at Harvard; they used such superlatives that I joked to colleagues that in a few years, they would be so critical, if not cynical, they would have a hard time believing their earlier enthusiasm.

On Thursday, I and many others learned of the university’s largest cheating scandal in living memory. According to news reports, close to half of the 250 undergraduates in “Introduction to Congress” are being investigated for allegedly cheating on a final examination. The fate of individual students is not yet known, but this event will clearly be a stain on Harvard’s reputation as large and consequential as that suffered by the service academies in earlier decades.

Many wonder how this could have happened at “MGU” (man’s greatest university). They will ask whether a large number of the same enthusiastic and loving students I met with Wednesday might well, in a year or two, be part of a cheating scandal themselves. The answer, I fear, is yes.

I’ve been at Harvard for more than half a century — as an undergraduate, a graduate student, a researcher and, for almost three decades, a professor. I know the university well, and in many ways I love it. Yet almost 20 years ago I became concerned about the effect that market ways of thinking has on our society, particularly our young. Colleagues and I undertook a study of “good work.” As part of that study, we interviewed 100 of the “best and brightest” students and spoke with them in depth about life and work.

The results of that study, reported in the book “Making Good,” surprised us. Over and over again, students told us that they admired good work and wanted to be good workers. But they also told us they wanted — ardently — to be successful. They feared that their peers were cutting corners and that if they themselves behaved ethically, they would be bested. And so, they told us in effect, “Let us cut corners now and one day, when we have achieved fame and fortune, we’ll be good workers and set a good example.” A classic case of the ends justify the means.

Read the rest of Gardner’s op-ed