Character Education: Grades K-6 Year 2 (Kids' Stuff)

Rating:
Summary: Part of a four-book series, this is an educator's goldmine.
Review: This four-book series is a goldmine for educators looking for practical ways to engage their students in substantive character education. The book's materials, developed and tested at one of our country's truly outstanding schools, merge solid academic content with character education. Together the books reflect a complete plan for engaging a school-community in the misson of character development. Central to the authors' [John Heidel and Marion Lyman-Mersereau] work and to the organization of the books is a school-wide, monlthly focus on a particular virtue, such as respect or courage. In this, the authors are addressing one of the core problems with our schools' efforts to respond to the current call for character education. Instead of psychobabble and talk of "inappropriate behavior" and "adjustment," their approach is a return to an older, richer language system of words, like "responsibility" and "cooperation," the language of character and human excellence.

Character formation has been described as what we do to help our young know the good, love the good adn do the good. These books address all dimensions of that description. The great power and benefit of Character Education is its appeal to the student's head, heart and hands.