Character and Community

Character Development at

Tallis

195Number of days

school-aged children spend in

school

Character Development

Parents?Or Teachers?

“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

The only real question is…

how well do we do it?

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)

Tallis Character

KindnessFairnessRespect

OptimismHonesty

• 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

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

Living in the School Community

Character Education

Assumed

Unconscious

Reactive

Random Character Education

Intentional

Planned

Organised

Reflective

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

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=wZYveRLtXXY

• I had to remove them to be able to email

Character Role Models

“Children have never been very good at listening to

their elders, but they have never failed to imitate

them.”James Baldwin

Common Language• Section of clip here

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

Character Through the Curriculum

• Caught or taught?

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?

Teachable Moments1. 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”

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?

Caught in CharacterThink 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.