Guidepost #1: Feeling Motivated and Getting Ready

Creating the conditions for positive changes in school systems among staff and community stakeholders is a critical step in making a good start to build an effective program. Identifying formal and informal leaders who will commit to working on and supporting changes and adaptations over an extended period of time because they believe in the purpose and goals of social and character education is crucial to the sustained effort that is necessary for long-term success.

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Guidepost #2: Reaching Out for Information, Knowledge and Resources

There is no way to know what the best options are for making changes without seeking multiple sources of formal and informal information. The most meaningful sources of information may be close at hand – school staff, students and parents – and should include best practices and effectiveness research from a variety of sources.

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Establishing a steering committee or an advisory board that will stay with the project as a permanent commitment to climate improvement and culture change can be one of the most important steps along the road to sustained development. Smaller, collegial groups of staff may be equally effective in guiding day-to-day implementation if there is a commitment to forming a professional learning community. A needs assessment or climate inventory can be an important step in checking to make sure that staff, student and parent perceptions are adequately unearthed before making planning decisions and may serve as a bench-mark for measuring later success.

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Planning can be tedious, challenging and frustrating, but without it you enter new country with an inadequate map. If understood as a dynamic process of generating ideas grounded in desired outcomes and generating objectives and activities that can be monitored and changed when necessary, planning can be your best friend.

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Before and as you implement new social and character development programs and practices, it is critically important to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions for effective implementation in terms of professional development, stakeholder awareness and involvement. For character education to impact school culture, distributive leadership is important, as is monitoring your progress and using your advisory board or professional leadership team to trouble shoot and problem solve implementation issues in order to make necessary adjustments and provide necessary support.

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If no one knows what you have accomplished or what a difference it has made, sustaining your program will be less likely. In order to sustain commitment and expand resources, recognition of effort and celebration of successes are necessary processes that provide cohesive strength to all of your efforts.

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Guidepost #7: Using Your Plan to Track Progress and Make Changes for Continuous Improvement

Acknowledging that you are in this for the long haul and then following-up with a review of program outcomes and your action plan status requires discipline born of commitment and motivation. Having qualitative and quantitative data to measure changes in staff and student perceptions, behaviors and performance is ideal and encouraging and listening to voices from your primary stakeholders, including students, is necessary.

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