Tag Archives: Character education social and emotional skills ethical core values

ALL-STAR TEACHERS PLAY THE SKILLS GAME

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The 90th annual MLB All-Star Game was played on July 9th at Progressive Field in Cleveland, Ohio.  The American League won the game for the seventh straight year.  Players are selected based on their SKILLS by three groups—fan voting, player voting, and the Commissioner’s office.  

In schools and classrooms, we call it the SKILLS GAME taught by All-Star Teachers at all grade levels.  The “fan voting” includes parents and students.  “Player voting” includes teachers and staff.  The “commissioner’s” selections are from school and district administrators. 

What might you find on a SKILLS SCORECARD?

On one of the older cards, you will find Bloom’s Taxonomy—the “go to game” for thinking skills a few decades ago.  

Many of you will remember the SCANS Scorecard, highlighting the need for employee skills in three general areas:  

  1. basic skills (reading, writing, math, listening, speaking);
  2. thinking skills (thinking creatively, making decisions, solving problems, reasoning); and
  3. personal qualities such as responsibility, self-esteem, sociability, self-management, and honesty.

You may have seen the Business World’s Scorecard where people are talking and writing about “soft skills.”

“Like it or not, emotions are an intrinsic part of our biological makeup, and every morning they march into the office (and our schools and classrooms) with us and influence our behavior.  Executives are starting to talk about the importance of such things as trust, confidence, empathy, adaptability and self-control.”    – Shari Caudron, “The Hard Case for Soft Skills”

Currently we have the 21st-Century Skills Scorecard that includes:

  • Ways of Thinking (creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and learning);
  • Ways of Working (communication and collaboration);
  • Tools for Working (communications technology and information literacy); and, 
  • Skills for Living (citizenship, life and career, and personal and social responsibility). 

Two skills that cut across all four categories are “collaborative problem solving” and “learning in digital networks.”

The Fortune 500 Companies Scorecard identifies five top qualities these companies seek in employees:  

  • Teamwork 
  • Problem solving
  • Interpersonal skills
  • Oral communication
  • Listening

Another Scorecard offered by the Pew Research Center showed that adults identified several essential skills that were most important for children and youth to learn “to get ahead in the world today.”  These included communication skills as the most important, followed by reading, math, teamwork, writing and logic. 

There are two other very essential Skills Scorecards.  One is on the topic of Emotional Intelligence (ET) and the other is a scorecard that describes Social Intelligence (SI).

You know well the All Star for Emotional Intelligence.  Psychologist Daniel Goleman hit a couple of “homeruns” with his books Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, and Working with Emotional Intelligence.  His scorecard included such skills as self-confidence, self-awareness, self-control, commitment and integrity.  

In discussing emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman cites Peter Salovey, a Yale professor who categorized components of emotional and social skills into five areas: 

  • Knowing one’s emotions
  • Managing emotions
  • Motivating oneself
  • Recognizing emotions in others
  • Handling relationships

The scorecard for Social Intelligence is also revealing and relevant. 

“Social intelligence [social skills] is as important as IQ when it comes to happiness, health, and success.  Empathetic people are less likely to experience anxiety, depression, and addictions later in life.  They are also more likely to be hired, promoted, earn more money, and have happier marriages and better-adjusted children.” –Mitch Prinstein, Ph.D., Board-Certified Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychologist

“If we increase social skills, we see commensurate increases in academic learning.  That doesn’t mean that social skills (including cooperation and self-control) make you smarter; it means that these skills make you more amenable to learning.” – Stephen Elliott, Vanderbilt Peabody Education and Psychology Researcher and co-author of the newly published The Social Skills Improvement System.

Lastly, there is the Ten Skills Scorecard from the work of Stephen Elliott and Frank Gresham who surveyed over 8,000 teachers and examined 20 years of research in classrooms across the country.  They identified these top 10 skills that students need to succeed: 

  • Listen to others
  • Follow the steps
  • Follow the rules
  • Ignore distractions
  • Ask for help
  • Take turns when you talk
  • Get along with others
  • Stay calm with others
  • Be responsible for your behavior
  • Do nice things for others

“Top 10 Social Skills Students Need to Succeed,” Research News at Vanderbilt University, 9-27-2007

Does this sound like the “skills-game“ teachers are now playing in schools and classrooms?  If so, then give these teachers your vote and be sure they are rewarded for being an ALL-STAR. 

Ed DeRoche, Director, Character Education Resource Center, University of San Diego. BLOG, July 2019

The Three “E’s” in December

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By Ed DeRoche

Last month’s blog focused on the “G” (gratitude) in the word “Thanksgiving.” Of the ten blogs I have written this past year, the “G” blog received the most responses.

Well, when you’re on a roll, why change things?

So as you know, the word “December” has three E’s in it. I selected three special E’s to discuss this month – Emotions, Empathy and Engagement.

EMOTIONS

Several months ago I read Dacher Keltner’s book, Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. He writes that emotions that bring out the “good in others and in one’s self can readily be cultivated” [taught and learned, observed and practiced, modeled and mentored]. “Emotions,” he says, are “the core of our capacities for virtue and cooperation, love and tenderness, and other virtues.”

It’s not news to you that social-emotional learning (SEL) programs are capturing the attention of school personnel and the public. In my March issue of News You Can Use, I provided an array of resources for teachers and administrators who want to implement SEL in their schools.

In a major report titled, The Positive Impact of Social and Emotional Learning for Kindergarten to Eighth-Grade Students, researchers from the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning found that SEL programs improved students’ social-emotional skills, attitudes about self and others, connections to school, positive social behavior, academic performance, reduced students’ conduct problems and emotional distress. Bottom-line: SEL programs are among the most successful youth- development programs offered to school-age youth.

EMPATHY

In one of my blogs, I asked and answered nine questions about empathy. Let me share with you a very important piece of information that teachers and others need for teaching students about empathy.

Researchers Dan Goleman and Paul Ekman report that there are three different ways teachers (and others) must address the teaching and learning of empathy.

  • The first stage of becoming empathetic is cognitive empathy – the act of knowing how another person feels.
  • The second stage is emotional empathy – the capacity to physically feel the emotions of another.
  • The third stage is compassionate empathy – the combination of cognitive and emotional empathy to take action about what one feels and thinks.

Atticus Finch said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb in his skin and walk around in it.”
(To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee)

That’s a good way of defining empathy – understanding what someone else is feeling because you have experienced it yourself or you can put yourself in his/her shoes.

ENGAGEMENT

Engagement includes relationships. So let’s start with some interesting information about “engagement” and then follow that with commentary about “relationships.”

A Gallup Poll found that 63% of students in schools are “highly engaged and enthusiastic about school.” Interestingly, there is an “engagement slide” – peaking during elementary school, decreasing through middle school and early high school, and then increasing through the rest of high school.

In a Kappan article on engagement in schools and classrooms, Shane J. Lopez reports that students polled suggest four ways to keep them engaged—note the relationships factor in each:

1) prepare them for the rigors of the work;
2) get to know them;
3) praise and recognize them for good school work, and;
4) have a school wide commit to building the strengths of each student.

“Teachers who are engaged in their work tend to have students who are engaged in learning.”

It is clear that in schools and in life there is a very close connection between emotions, engagement (relationships), and empathy. As author Robert J. Marzano writes:

Positive relationships between teachers and students are among the most commonly cited variables associated with effective instruction. If the relationship is strong, instructional strategies seem to be more effective. Conversely, a weak or negative relationship will mute or even negate the benefits of even the most effective instructional strategies.

Let’s “wrap-it-up.”
December is the month of holy days and holidays.

During this month let us celebrate and apply at home, in school, and where we work these positive emotions—joy, gratitude, hope, inspiration, awe and LOVE.

During this month let us not engage in what Professor William Glasser calls the “seven deadly habits of relationships – criticizing, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening, punishing, and rewarding to control.”

During this month let’s respond positively to Maria Shriver’s request that all of us join the “Inner Peace Corps.” She reminds us that “we are the American family and many of us are hurting and feeling isolated, lonely and scared. Let’s step up. Let’s serve one another. Let’s be friends.”

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Edward DeRoche, Director, Character Education Resource Center December 2018 Blog
For past issues of News You Can Use and Blogs: http://charactermatters.sandiego.edu 

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All About Character

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October 2018 Blog
By Edward F. DeRoche, Ph.D.

Politicians, the press, the public, and most educators are excited about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM), and, of course, the ever present thrust for more testing.

Most of us know that knowledge keeps no better than fish—use it or lose it. But the one thing that we carry with us for a lifetime is our “character.”

Recent polls of public attitudes toward schools show that Americans want schools to prepare the young to be academically competent, and career ready. But they want more.

The public is urging educators and others to help children and youth develop character strengths such as kindness, gratitude, self-control, social skills, teamwork, diligence, perseverance, strong work ethic, positive attitudes, ingenuity, integrity, justice, caring, respect, and responsibility—all of which are learned.

What do we know about character? We know that:

• Character is learned—taught to the young by the entertainment industry, the media, the Internet, the environment they live in, their peers and role models, and hopefully by parents, teachers, schools, youth agencies, and religious institutions.

• Character is about strengths and virtues that guide an individual “to act in an ethical, pro-social manner.”

• Character is about choices—the ones we make daily (good or bad, ethical or unethical). It is about decision-making—the circumstances, the risks, the chances, the consequences, and the rewards.

• Character is about relationships and social skills—skills such as sharing, participating, following directions, and listening. It is learning how to be a friend, how to care for others, how to appreciate others, how to be polite, respectful, courteous, and how to resolve conflicts peacefully.

  • Character is about “emotional” self-discipline.
  • Character is who you are when no one is looking, or when everyone is looking.

What, then, is character education? Let’s use the U.S Department of Education’s definition:

Character education is a learning process that enables students and adults in a school community to understand, care about and act on core ethical values such as respect, justice, civic virtue and citizenship, and responsibility for self and others.

In schools, character education must be approached comprehensively to include the emotional, intellectual and moral qualities of a person or group. It must offer multiple opportunities for students to learn about, discuss and enact positive social behaviors. Student leadership and involvement are essential for character education to become a part of a student’s beliefs and actions.

The most frequently asked question—the one I get most from educators and parents—what’s the payoff?

One, a commitment to making character education an integral part of the education process will increase students’ academic achievement. For example, among middle-school students, the character strengths of perseverance, love, gratitude, hope, and perspective, predict academic achievement.

Two, character education in schools has a broad impact on students’ pro-social and moral behaviors by developing their problem-solving skills, building positive peer relationships, enhancing their self- esteem, improving their interpersonal skills, and strengthening their ability at self-regulation (control).

A third “pay-off”—an effective character education program shows that the school will become a more caring community, that discipline referrals will drop, that quality of peer and adult relationships will improve, and that students’ will make a greater commitment to schooling and academic achievement.

Professors Tom Hierck and Kent Peterson (University of Wisconsin- Madison) found that there are 19 student and staff behaviors that contribute to a positive school climate.

Showing pride in school Collaboration
Kindness
Taking pride in one’s work Leadership
Helping others
Using time wisely
Being prepared
Love of learning
Making good choices
Active listening Cooperation
Using appropriate communication
Caring
Self-reliance Perseverance/resilience
Making an insightful comment Organization
Going above and beyond

Take note of how many of these behaviors are character-related.