CEP 11 Principles	Key Ideas	Key Strategies
Principle #1 The school community promotes core ethical and performance values as the foundation of good character.		Integration Character Development and The Common Core State Standards Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development
Principle #2 The school defines “character” comprehensively to include thinking, feeling, and doing.	Nell Noddings - Observe your actions to learn what matters to you!	Reflection on 'Dilemmas' (see top of column at right, Consider linking Dilemmas to Writing Prompts, after reflection / Discussion))
Principle #3 The school uses a comprehensive, intentional, and proactive approach to character development.		Peter Yarrow - Operation RESPECT
Principle #4 The school creates a caring community.		Showing RESPECT by Listening Caring School Communities - Rutgers Center for Social & Character Development
Principle #5 The school provides students with opportunities for moral action.		- Service Learning  - Academic Service Learning, including the teaching of other students
Principle #6 The school offers a meaningful and challenging academic curriculum that respects all learners, develops their character, and helps them to succeed.
Principle #7 The school fosters students’ self-motivation.	Thomas Friedman - 401K World (If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you.)	Differentiate by student pre-existing interests, foster high levels of student engagement, using the emotional power of the arts,  insure successful creation of related art works by students,
Principle #8 The school staff is an ethical learning community that shares responsibility for character education and adheres to the same core values that guide the students.
Principle #9 The school fosters shared leadership and long-range support of the character education initiative.
Principle #10 The school engages families and community members as partners in the character-building effort.
Principle #11 The school regularly assesses its culture and climate, the functioning of its staff as character educators, and the extent to which its students manifest good character.		New Assessments and Measures of Virtues

Nel Noddings - Caring

CEP Performance Values White Paper: how to develop performance values, describing ten practices, some schoolwide, some classroom-focusedthat are supported by research and used by exemplary educators.

Effort by Lauren Resnik

Growth vs Fixed Mindset - Carol Dweck

The 7 Mindsets

Can Perseverance & 'Grit' be taught?

Annenberg - Teaching Civic Values

Civic Education - Justice For All

Operation Respect - Peter Yarrow

Be That One....Often one person speaking up can stop bullying....

The power of one person speaking up....Replicating Milgram's Experiment

Environmental Character

George Washington as a model of Civic Virtue

Best Overview of Social-Emotional Learning - CASEL

SEL: Brain Research & Emotional Control (Patience, Calmness, Cooperation, and Kindness as skills that can be trained)

Research on SEL

Character Development & Mental Health

The Virtues Project

The Virtues Project - Listing With Definitions

The Virtues Project - Teachable Moments

A Research-Driven Guide for Educators Foreword - Over 2000 years ago Aristotle noted, All adu lts involved with children either help or thwart childrens' growth and development, whether we like it, intend it or not. The inescapable fact is this: as adults involved intimately with children, educators cannot avoid doing character education. Either intentionally or unintentionally, teachers shape the formation of charac ter in students simply by association through positive or negative ex ample. Character educati on is thus not optional in the school - it is inevitable, and therefore merits intentional focus and priority status in the school. Character education is good, practical politics. It has been long recognized that self-governance itself depends upon the character of citizens. Plato acknowledged this when he crafted the blueprint for The Republic. The American founders repeatedly emphasized that our own national experiment would succeed or fail depending upon the character of its citizenry , clearly perceiving education to be the vital foundation to self-governance and the success of our form of representative democracy. Bluntly stated, the role of the schools in the formation of civic character is a vital national interest. Good character education is good education. Recent findings show that effective character education support s and enhances the academic goals of schools: good character education promotes learning. It is clear that just as we cannot avoid character education, we cannot afford to implement it half-heartedly or wrong-headedly. We need to take character education as seriously as we take academic education. This raises important questions and concerns about the best way to go about incorporating character education into school life. As interest in character education continues to rise, educators face tough questions. Is character education a priority? Can they spare the time and resources from high stakes testing preparation to focus on character education? How do they know what is effective practice in character education; i.e., what works in character education? The following report, What Works in Character Education (WWCE) represents an effort to uncover and synthesize existing scientific research on the effects of K-12 character education. It is made up of a brief overview of the project, a description of the main findings, a set of guidelines on effective character education practice, and some brief cautionary re marks regarding how to interpret these findings. It is intended to provide practical advice for educators derived from a review of the research. Subsequent reports will more fully chronicle the scientific journey taken to reach these conclusions. Click here for full report

Character Counts - Character Standards...1 These Standards draw heavily upon the hands-on experience of thousands of educators involved in the Josephson Institutes CHARACTER COUNTS! school and student improvement programs. They also incorporate the most current research and theories including: positive school climate, connectedness, PBIS behavior modification, the growth mindset, executive function, change theory, emotional intelligence, multiple intelligences, and research-based instructional strategies. These Standards also incorporate provisions and recommendations included in the Common Core State Standards Initiative; the Partnership for 21st Century Skills Framework of Student Outcomes and Support Systems; the Illinois Learning Standards for Social/Emotional Learning; the Kansas Social, Emotional, and Character Development Model Standards; the ASCD Whole Child Initiative, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL); the Character Education Partnership; the Institute for Excellence & Ethics; the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs; and the National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention.

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