4. “We are all character educators”
• Though what we teach
• Through the resources we use (do our
resources show diversity and respect for other
views and lifestyles?)
• Through how we teach
• Through how we act. Being a model of ethical
and moral behaviour
• Through how we treat students and each
other
6. Session Objectives
• To recap what we mean by Character
Education
• To consider different ways that we can
promote and develop Tallis Character across
the school
• To plan specific ways that we can contribute to
the development of good character amongst
our students (and ourselves)
8. • To acknowledge that we are all character
educators
• To give more prominence and status to the non-
academic things that we do
• To give due consideration to the role of the
personal and moral development of young
people in understanding the world and changing
it for the better
• To strengthen our community by articulating
what it means to belong to the Tallis Community
and focusing on how we treat ourselves and
each other
Tallis Character Aims
9. What is Character Education?
It is…
• All educational activities
that help young people to
develop a moral compass
• The culture and ethos of a
school or classroom
• Ethical and ‘right’ action,
common morality
• Something that happens in
our classrooms whether we
acknowledge it or not
• The Tallis Way, or what we
want it to be
It is not…
• Moral indoctrination
• Promotion of moral ideas of
a particular belief system
• Based on the values of an
individual or small group
• Mindless conditioning
• Exclusively religious
• Individualistic or
conservative
10. Living in the School Community
Character
Education
Assumed
Unconscious
Reactive
Random
Character
Education
Intentional
Planned
Organised
Reflective
11. But we can’t do any more!
• Classroom Ethos
• Role Models
• Character Vocabulary
• Relationships
• Personal Interactions
• ‘Teachable Moments’
• Affirmation and Correction
• ‘At best’ stories
• Strength spotting
12. Building a classroom community
• There is a 2minute section of a clip embedded
here and a 1 minute section embedded on
slide 16.
• The whole clip can be found
athttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZYve
RLtXXY
• I had to remove them to be able to email
13. Character Role Models
“Children have never been very
good at listening to their elders,
but they have never failed to
imitate them.”
James Baldwin
16. What do you say?
• There is no rule against it
• Everyone else is doing it
• No one will find out
• What would you do if someone hit your
sister/brother/mother/…?
• I didn’t have a choice
• The position I was in meant that I had to act
that way
18. Teachable Moments
• Read the scenario you have been given
• What would you do about it?
• Whose responsibility is it to address the issue?
• What circumstances or extra information
might make a difference to how you approach
the situation?
19. Teachable Moments
1. You are in a class and you hear one student tell
another student to ‘shut up’
2. During a lesson you read a student’s response to
a question and it shows a clear and significant
misunderstanding of the work
3. You receive an email from a colleague that you
feel has an aggressive and accusatory tone
4. You are on the bus and you overhear some Tallis
students talking. One says to another “You dress
too much like a boy/girl. If you want people to
like you then you have to change what you
wear”
20. Next Steps
• How do we identify students, staff, members
of the community who display the character
traits?
• How do we reward the positive use of Tallis
Character?
• How should we display the Tallis Character
traits?
21. Caught in Character
Think of how or where you have seen other
members of the school staff demonstrating any of
the character traits today or in the recent past.
Write the person’s name, trait shown and what they
did on a post-it and put it in the jar.
You can put more than one post-it into the jar and
at any time today.
Editor's Notes
5mins (by the time everyone has arrived and the starting task has been done and discussed)
Children spend around 975 hours a year at school or 195 days. Not taking evenings and mornings into account, that means that children spend over half of their time in school 54%
Change between hours, days and percentage so that teachers can’t tell each other the answers
This means that our role is significant in the lives and development of young people, not just their academic performance.
7mins
Some of us feel that our job is to deliver the academic curriculum and get exam results. And to some extent that is true. A large extent. But the job of a teacher has always been so much more than that. And even if we wanted to just deliver the curriculum we could not escape the fact that we are constantly delivering lessons that we do not plan for. How to treat others. Acting with integrity and honesty. Being compassionate and considerate.
This does not mean that we should not be firm or follow the rules or deliver punishments and consequences for poor decisions and bad behaviour. But it does mean that we have a responsibility to consider how we do these things and recognise our part in our students’ lives as role models. So the responsibility for building character strengths does not just lie with one person or another but is the collective and mutual responsibility of families, schools and communities.
8mins
8mins
10mins
11mins
Ask people if the remember the traits
12mins
The first three but then MOST OF ALL the fourth
14mins
Character, virtue, ethics, being a ‘good’ person – these things could be and are the subjects of philosophy and religion and debates that are without conclusion. But for us, for Tallis, we are talking about what it means to belong here. For staff and students and members of the school community to know what it means to be a part of this community. That we are kind and thoughtful and compassionate, honest and act with integrity, optimistic and cheerful, respectful, fair and ethical and blah
15mins
This is what we want. For Character to be developed in an intentional, planned, organised and reflective way.
16mins
The complaints that we might ordinarily have about new initiatives shouldn’t apply here. Mainly because it is what good teachers have always done anyway. But also because of the ways in which TC can be promoted and encouraged in a variety of ways across the school.
21mins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZYveRLtXXY
I want to ask you all a question. You don’t have to answer directly, just in your head. When you were planning your lessons for this year, how many of you planned your classroom culture and ethos? How many of you considered the environment you wanted to create? And if you did consider it, what was the driver for your decision? How many of you considered the underpinning requirements for good learning and cooperative work? Not just the academic but the personal. The absolute foundation of how we treat each other.
Task: I want you to spend a minute thinking about how you will consciously create your classroom community and write that into pledge 1
22mins
23mins
25mins
Introduce affirmation and correction
27mins
How can you use the Character Traits to address these kinds of statements?
30mins
Consider your own curriculum. What sections do you teach that could lend itself to the teaching of character?
32mins
Each of these scenarios is a real situation. The group will be divided into 4 and each group will have a different scenario. They will be asked to discuss what they would do about it, whose responsibility it is to address the issue
37mins
Changing circumstances;
The student told to shut up was discussing the work with another student. The student told to shut up made an offensive homophobic comment.
The student struggles with this lesson and the concepts dealt with. The student has been talking and behaving poorly all lesson.
Your know the colleague well out of work. The colleague is someone in a higher/lower position than you are.
There are a lot of members of the public on the bus with you. You are alone on the bus with the students.
