Considering How to Proceed and Whom Else to Involve
Many schools find themselves at Guidepost #3 although they may not have fully articulated the previous two steps. Perhaps your situation is that you have had some home-grown approaches such as a virtue of the month and community service for a few years, but now you need something new and more effective.
Another school, faced with discipline problems, may have adopted the tenets of a commercial program and found it worked for them; yet another school may have embraced service-learning as an instructional tool and discovered it actually changed student attitudes; still another district may have met some success in using professional development in social and emotional learning as a way of developing a caring community. A test for this Guidepost is simple: In order to make the right choices, you need to carefully choose a strategy that will bring the right people to the table to consider carefully how to identify potential roadblocks and strategies that will give you the best chance for success. Now is the time to pull your school or district together, incorporating the strategies of Guideposts #1 and #2. Perhaps you'll discover a need for some specific information in order to proceed. It's fine to return to Guidepost #2 at that point, particularly if not doing so could risk sending you off course.
Make certain that all stakeholders are involved, including students and LISTEN to them. If your school or district has a union or teachers' association, also include its representatives. Instead of a piecemeal approach to social and character development, assemble your core committee that represents all stakeholders, apprise them of the school's assessments, designate individual sub-groups to report on pertinent research, and decide, as a school or district, on a plan of action.
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