Academic Standards
Character Education and the STEPS TO RESPECT Program
Character education helps students know, care about, and act on core ethical values such as fairness, honesty, compassion, responsibility, and respect for self and others. Although there is no single formula for effective character education, the Character Education Partnership (CEP), a nonprofit coalition committed to fostering teaching and modeling positive character traits in schools, developed the Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education (Lickona, Schaps, & Lewis, 2003). These principles, cited below, serve as criteria that schools can use to plan an effective character-education initiative and evaluate various character-education programs, books, and curricula.
1. Promotes core ethical values as the basis of good character
In STEPS TO RESPECT lessons, students study and discuss core ethical values, such as respect for self and others, caring, responsibility, compassion, trustworthiness, and self-discipline. This whole-school program is designed to decrease bullying and to foster a climate in which adults and students work together to develop a school culture based on care and respect.
2. Defines "character" comprehensively to include thinking, feeling, and behavior
The STEPS TO RESPECT program integrates the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects of character education. Skill and literature lessons help students understand the concepts of friendship and respect. Lessons also teach empathy for bullying targets and specific, caring ways children can respond when they witness bullying. During lessons, teachers model and children practice behaviors that help build friendship and prevent bullying in school. Students learn to consider others’ feelings—in particular, how it feels to be included in and excluded from activities. They also learn that their actions can be a powerful force in creating a school climate that is respectful and caring to others. All of these skills combined help students understand, care about, and act on core ethical values.
3. Uses a comprehensive, intentional, proactive, and effective approach to character development
The STEPS TO RESPECT program is designed for schoolwide implementation. It supports schools in taking intentional, proactive measures to create a caring, respectful school environment. The Program Guide clearly outlines steps for developing an anti-bullying policy aligned with disciplinary measures, discouraging bullying by encouraging respectful behavior, and promoting a positive playground environment.
The program's adult-training component, which is as essential to successful schoolwide implementation as the student lessons, includes training sessions for all adults in the school (administrators, teachers, custodial and office staff, playground monitors, bus drivers, and so on) and parents to help schools provide a safe, bullying-free environment.
The program is based on a solid foundation of research about bullying in children and the effectiveness of school-based programs in addressing bullying, including evidence that supports adult training, skill practice, and schoolwide rules. Research also suggests that friendship acts as a buffer against the effects of bullying. Friendship skills are taught in the program.
4. Creates a caring school community
The STEPS TO RESPECT program provides a framework for facilitating the adult-student partnership that is crucial to righting the imbalance of power in bullying. The program helps staff, students, and parents create a climate and culture in which all members feel safe, respected, and included.
All school staff, including playground monitors, bus drivers, and lunchroom supervisors, learn how to become trusted adults students can turn in a bullying situation and who affirm students for reporting. The program also guides schools in creating safe and respectful environments throughout the school and on the bus to and from school.
In STEPS TO RESPECT lessons, children learn and practice skills that help them form caring attachments and make friends with other children. They also learn how to maintain friendships by being trustworthy, helpful, and forgiving when misunderstandings occur.
5. Provides students with opportunities for moral action
In the STEPS TO RESPECT program, students put empathy skills into practice by considering the feelings of peers who are bullied. A focus of the program is the bystander’s role in bullying incidents, with an emphasis on the importance of being part of the solution instead of part of the problem. This emphasis helps students take responsibility for positive action.
Role-plays allow students to rehearse and practice social skills. Scenarios for lessons and role-plays focus on nonclassroom settings, such as the playground, hallways, lunchroom, and bus. Transfer-of-learning strategies—such as Skill Detectives and Imagine the Day—help students apply skills to real-life situations.
Literature lessons reinforce the skills and values that students learn by providing another medium in which they can apply the concepts of friendship and respect.
6. Includes a meaningful and challenging academic curriculum that respects all learners, develops their character, and helps them to succeed
STEPS TO RESPECT lessons use a variety of learning strategies that respect all students, including role-plays, cooperative small-group and whole-group activities, reading, discussion, videos, photo cards, and posters.
The program identifies respectful behavior as a core ingredient in the classroom environment. To develop a sense of community, teachers are encouraged to make a plan to get to know students as individuals and to involve students in the development of classroom rights and responsibilities.
Discussions and role-play exercises require cooperative, effective communication and problem solving in a group format. The literature units support language arts learning objectives. Students read, respond to, and evaluate contemporary novels. They build and use vocabulary related to social and emotional skills, with an emphasis on identifying emotions. And they apply critical thinking skills—compare, contrast, predict, synthesize, evaluate, and analyze—to literature.
Further Adventures within the lessons provide suggestions for integrating concepts and skills into other academic areas, such as math, social studies, and art.
7. Strives to foster students’ self-motivation
Empathy training in the STEPS TO RESPECT program encourages students to consider the rights and needs of others as they make decisions about friendship and respect. Natural reinforcement occurs when students feel the satisfaction of doing something positive for another child. This satisfaction helps develop a child’s intrinsic motivation to repeat prosocial behaviors.
The program takes a clear stand that bullying is unfair and one-sided and that it is not okay under any circumstances. This helps students develop a clear understanding of what is right and wrong and encourages them to be part of the solution, thus opening up many opportunities to work together to make a positive difference in their school community.
8. Engages the school staff as a learning and moral community that shares responsibility for character education and attempts to adhere to the same core values that guide the education of students
The STEPS TO RESPECT program begins with an all-staff training in which participants learn and practice specific skills for recognizing and responding to bullying. The training gives staff opportunities to generate ideas for how to support children and how to intervene effectively in bullying situations.
In addition, teachers, counselors, and administrators participate in a coaching-training session to learn in-depth coaching processes for use with children who have been bullied or have bullied others. A short curriculum orientation for classroom instructors focuses on features of the curriculum and specific classroom strategies, such as role-playing techniques. Four short booster trainings provide staff with opportunities for reinforcement and reflection. These trainings are as essential to the program as the student lessons.
9. Fosters shared moral leadership and long-range support of the character education initiative
The principal's leadership is crucial to successful implementation of the STEPS TO RESPECT program. The principal sets the tone for the program throughout the school and works with core staff to secure buy-in; develop an anti-bullying policy, disciplinary procedures, and reporting strategies; provide parent information; and monitor the program.
STEPS TO RESPECT staff trainings are facilitated by school staff, such as counselors or a team of teachers. It is recommended that the parent training be facilitated (or co-facilitated) by the principal, whom parents identify as the school's leader.
The final lesson at each level of the curriculum includes a project that guides students in considering the whole-school environment and what they can do to create a more caring, respectful community. These lessons motivate students to take leadership in exercising social responsibility.
10. Engages families and community members as partners in the character-building effort
The STEPS TO RESPECT program acknowledges the critical role of parent involvement. A yearly introduction letter affirms the school’s commitment to safety and outlines the program. The parent-orientation workshop provides an overview of the program, practice for identifying bullying behaviors, and identification of ways to reinforce skills at home. A reproducible handout, "What Parents Should Know About Bullying," provides additional information.
The program's curriculum component includes take-home handouts that inform parents of concepts and skills and provide guidance for supporting skills and learning at home. Additionally, parents are encouraged to talk with school staff about any bullying reports they receive from their children.
11. Evaluates the character of the school, the school staff’s functioning as character educators, and the extent to which students manifest good character
Committee for Children provides tools to assess the STEPS TO RESPECT program. Committee for Children also offers guidelines for using discipline referral data to conduct needs assessment and process and outcome evaluation.
Reference
Lickona, T., Schaps, E., and Lewis, C. (1995). Eleven principles of effective character education. Washington, DC: Character Education Partnership.
