A Closer Look at Guidepost #1 Within Schools

Radix Elementary School
Zane North Elementary School
Carl W. Goetz Middle School
Memorial Middle School
Pequannock Valley School

School: Radix Elementary School, Williamstown NJ
Grade Levels: PreK – 4
CONTACT
Raymond C. Dinovi, Jr.
Principal
(856) 728-8650
E-mail: rdinovi@monroetwp.k12.nj.us
Website: http://www.monroetwp.k12.nj.us/es/radix/radix.htm 

Guidepost #1: Feeling Motivated and Getting Ready

Radix Elementary School followed Michael Fullen’s Model for Initiating Change. Initially, the site-based management team echoed that the staff was ready to re-examine the current way in which character education was taught at Radix Elementary School. All stakeholders were provided an opportunity, in a non-threatening environment, to voice their opinions on character education. Questions about how to teach character education, the definition of character education, and how you would like Radix to look five years down the road were asked, through a series of focus group meetings with all stakeholders.

Stakeholders spoke freely and their thoughts were all recorded, and synthesized searching for commonalities. All stakeholders felt they were not just a part of this initiative, but an important cog in the wheel for fostering positive change. Children were included in this process through the school’s student council. The data collected showed three common desires. One was the need for Radix to develop a common language. Through multiple faculty meetings, employees took the three character traits Respect, Responsibility and Caring and wrote how these words Anchor would look at Radix. The Character Education Advisor took all of the actions and synthesized them into one document: The Radix Code of Conduct. Connecting actual observable behaviors to abstract terms was a great stepping-stone in this initial process. The character education advisor facilitated this process, as the administration publicly supported this initiative, while allowing the stakeholders to lead the way. Consensus was the method of decision-making, not majority rules.

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School: Zane North Elementary School, Collingswood NJ
Grade Levels: PreK – 6
CONTACT
Thomas Santo
Principal
(856) 962-5710
E-mail: santo@collingswood.k12.nj.us
Website: http://zane.collingswood.k12.nj.us/index.jsp

Guidepost #1: Feeling Motivated and Getting Ready

The team approach has been the framework that has helped to promote core ethical values. The team “t-together; e-everyone; a-achieves; m-more” leadership philosophy empowers all participants. Collaborative efforts over the past eight years have created a model character education initiative that is reassessed and modified to meet the needs our school family. In a team leadership approach, character education issues are continually addressed, reassessed, and promoted. Teacher collaboration and team unity is demonstrated at Zane North as well as in district grade level cooperative meetings. Para-professionals, maintenance employees, and secretaries are members of the Zane North team. Para-professionals and secretaries attend staff discussions and have offered personal time, talents, as well as aptitude to serve students, parents, staff, and administration. An open door policy has fostered a dialogue between all parties. On a district level the administration shares monthly with the superintendent, fellow principals and supervisors.

Counselors, teachers, administrators, parents, and students have agreed on the core ethical values for the district of Collingswood. A district wide strategic plan has developed action plans with specific behavioral objectives. A portfolio of character education materials has been generated and shared district wide. The newly updated website, e-mail, STAR newsletter, monthly calendar, and hallway displays, and combine to address core ethical values. Reinforcement encourages student and staff character lifestyle choices.

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School: Carl W. Goetz Middle School, Jackson, NJ
Grade Levels: 6 - 8
CONTACT
Carol Lawrence
7th grade Literacy Teacher
(732) 833-4610
E-mail: calawrence@jacksonsd.org
Website: http://goetz.jacksonsd.org/home.aspx

Guidepost #1: Feeling Motivated And Getting Ready

The Carl W. Goetz Middle School joined the country’s focus on character education back in the 1990’s. A veteran teacher gathered and motivated a small group of fellow teachers to form the first Character Education Committee. With some research and a workshop under their belts they proceeded to launch a school character education program. The program consisted of “The Quote of the Week” and monthly lesson plans. The committee membership changed yearly, as did the character education activities and implementation methods. In the year 2000 a district Service-Learning initiative introduced the need for a new Character Education and Service-Learning combined committee at the Goetz Middle School.

The “Quotes of the Week” program continued while service projects got a make-over to become service-learning projects. One GREAT day the Service-Learning Committee Coordinator and the Character Education Committee Chairperson joined forces and presented to the faculty. It was explained that Service-Learning is the ACTION component of Character Education, and that the two go hand in hand with the common goal of educating the whole student to produce a moral-minded young adult. Faculty and staff got excited and quickly became involved in various service learning projects. The efforts of the students at Goetz were noticed by all stakeholders. Information about a new opportunity was sent down from the Superintendent’s office to the Service-Learning and Character Education committees. As a result, the two committee chairs, along with the principal and a technology teacher, wrote a proposal for consideration to take part in the PACES Project (Partnership for Advancing Character Education through Service-Learning) offered by The Center for Character Education at Rutgers University.

Goetz Middle School was selected as a participant and was mentored for one year. Under the direction of PACES the Character Education/Service-Learning committee surveyed the stakeholders using Schumer’s Assessment, documented observable behaviors in discipline and academics, and developed the goals of the Goetz Middle School Character Education Program while adding to the already successful Service-Learning Program. It was a natural fit – Character Education, Service-Learning, and PACES. The Carl W. Goetz Middle School was feeling motivated, and getting ready to accomplish its goal of developing a solid and permanent Character Education Program that would be infused into the curriculum and be the driving force for all Service Learning Projects in the future.

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School: Memorial Middle School, Fair Lawn, NJ
Grade Levels: 6 - 8
CONTACT
Laurianne Brunetti
Character Education Coordinator/7th-8th LAL
(201) 401-2351
E-mail: lbrunetti@fairlawnschools.org
Website: https://www.edline.net/GroupHome.page

Guidepost #1: Feeling Motivated and Getting Ready

The experience of middle school is akin to riding a rollercoaster. It is an experience of twists and turns, ups and downs and it can be a challenge to keep your eyes and to hold on tight. As middle school teachers, we ride that rollercoaster every day with our students and we try to help them to develop the skills and to apply the strategies that will help them to not only enjoy the ride but to also gain confidence along their journeys. Our motivation to create and infuse programs of character emerged from a desire to help our students to reach beyond themselves and to create a school atmosphere of awareness, empathy and service to others.

Starting off small, two classroom teachers and less than sixty sixth grade students in two Language Arts classes began a small service-learning project. Students were asked to choose their favorite children’s books and stories and to read them aloud onto audio tapes. Students practiced their reading skills, shared stories of personal reading experiences and analyzed story elements as they prepared for their task. The recordings also included personal greeting messages of cheer, hope and friendship written by the students within a writer’s workshop. When the recordings were complete, we created care packages (which included crayons, coloring books, hand-held games and crossword puzzles donated by the students and their families) and delivered them to the Tomorrows’ Childrens Institute, an organization and treatment center which cares for children with life-threatening illnesses.

The project proved to be a life-changing experience for our students and for our school, beyond what we had imagined. Our students’ eyes were opened to the world around them and once they began to see, they could not look away. The following school year, when our students had moved on the next grade, they returned, independently, eager to know what the “next project” was and who we would be helping this year. In that moment, we realized that we had begun something powerful, something that was now much greater than two teachers and two classrooms, something that had the potential to begin to open not only their eyes, but also their minds and hearts. We had begun to make a difference and thus began our journey to “Celebrate Character” and to develop that sense of responsibility, service and community.

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School: Pequannock Valley School, Pompton Plains, NJ
Grade Levels: 6 - 8
CONTACT
Dr. William H. Trusheim
Principal
(973) 616-6050
E-mail: william.trusheim@pequannock.org
Website: http://pvms.pequannock.org/index.cfm?sid=39

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.

Our early experiences in character education were limited to using focus words and asking students, staff, and parents to use these authentically in order to instill the importance of good values in our students. The first of these focus words in September 1995 was “Responsibility.” While we understood that these values were important, we also felt that we needed to make a more concerted effort to bring a more intense program of character education to our school. This was underscored when the State of New Jersey made available entitlement grants for Character Education. We jumped at the chance to do more in this area and identified “Character Counts!” as a nationally respected program that was congruent to what we had been doing.

Identifying leadership for the program was a crucial part of the process of advancing character ed to a higher level. Two faculty members had been instrumental in our early efforts. These two faculty members were asked to co-chair the new initiative and a faculty committee was formed. There was a pitfall to be experienced here because in the course of that school year, one of the co-chairs decided to retire and the other was accepted to a doctoral program in the Midwest. The search for new leaders ended up being fortuitous because our present chair and co-chair stepped forward to take the reins of our initiative. They attended a training session and came back supercharged to lead the faculty to a new level of involvement.

This began with a presentation to the entire faculty during the first faculty meeting of that year followed by an activity where the faculty worked together to identify some school wide projects that would get us started in the right direction. From this, we asked for faculty volunteers to participate in our Character Education Committee. Members of this committee took on responsibility for various aspects of the program. To this day, many of the same people continue to participate in formal and informal leadership roles in our character education program. We believe that motivation and enthusiasm for the program was enhanced by recognizing those who implemented character ed activities and by the intrinsic rewards gained from seeing positive results in school culture and climate as a result of character education programs. It was gratifying to note that last year, when we asked for interested faculty members to volunteer to help form an advisory group program for our school over half of our faculty came to the organizational meeting. This broad base of support has helped to sustain character education in our school.

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