Building character starts with heart

In a recent NY Times Op-Ed, The Building Blocks of Learning, David Brooks says, "Education is one of those spheres where the heart is inseparable from the head."

Good educators know this and it is an unspoken rule in a successful classroom - the teacher pours time, love and attention into the child and the child deeply desires to be worthy of that caring and attention.  This bond is what develops character in a child.

As independent school educators, we secretly scoff at the public discussion about character in schools.  You've seen the programs - the "Character Trait of the Week".  Does that actually build character?

What does build character are qualities that are inherent in the culture of the school - the very essence of the daily experience.  It should be intentional - as much as we can make it so.  At our school it comes in the form of a commitment to intrinsic goals and to a balanced set of values.  It is stated in our motto, our mission, our values and our statement of diversity.  It is practiced through many interactions between teachers and students, discussions among faculty and administrators, and much self-evaluation.

One of our administrative goals this year is to examine our culture of compassion. What does it mean?  Are we modelling it?

Checking in with students is one way to assess whether they are absorbing the character traits we strive to build in them.  In a recent conversation about how kids prepare to succeed in high school, a seventh grader told me, "Here, learning is fun.  When we get to high school we don't have to learn how to be motivated and work hard, because we already know that.  We have some freedom here and so we know how to handle ourselves."

I think she nailed it pretty well.  Intrinsic motivation, taking responsibility, confidence, loving to learn - these are  many of the most important things we can teach.  They don't come from the character trait of the week - they are addressed through the heart, and are woven throughout the life of the school.

Teaching for Character

How do we teach character traits?  This is an interesting question. I see it play out so well in our independent schools and not necessarily so well in public schools - and why is that?

This article in Atlantic, How Kids Learn Resilience,  really tries to get at why it's so hard to teach character in public schools.  Part of the problem, the author says, lies in the things that children have learned from a young age at home - that set them up for success or failure early on, and part lies in the way our public schools typically reward and punish children and how ineffective that method is.

It is true that we are a self-selecting group in many ways in independent schools, with children who are already skewed to success - with the right kind of support at home to give them the tools for their future success.  But I believe that at Parker, it is how we teach - and how we create a school culture - that is the difference maker when our results are compared with public schools - and even with other, less effective independent schools.

Last night was Project Night at Parker.  In Pre K, children's sculpture, painting, narrated books and treasured art, were on display along with a slide show of their year of exploration and discovery.  Jump down the hall to the gym, where our 8th grade students were giving their thesis presentations.  This is a clear illustration of the "bookends" of a Parker education.

The autonomy, the fun and the exploratory nature of the Pre K leads directly to the ability of 13-year-olds to stand in front of an audience and succinctly and with passion, defend their reasoning about complex social justice issues that they chose to delve into - Gun Control, Racial Profiling, the Death Penalty, to name a few.  The poise and confidence, the underlying resilience and perseverance to research and write a 15 - 20 page paper, and the intellectual and public-speaking chops that it took to accomplish the presentations is a testament to effective school culture.  It is not an accident that Parker students can do this.

It is the result of giving students autonomy, support, and space to explore (and "fail").  It is the product of critique, self-evaluation and real responsibility.  Students will be more likely to display positive academic habits when they are in an environment where they feel a sense of belonging, independence and growth is how Paul Tough puts it in the Atlantic article.  It is the antithesis of traditional reward and punishment systems.  It is beautiful to see.

Intrinsic Motivation

Motivating kids to want to do their best, to give their all, is kind of tricky.  For most of us adults, the reward for good school work was a grade.  And maybe also a parent's promise of a dollar for A's on a report card, or perhaps the teacher would display the spelling tests for all to see.  You felt rewarded if yours was perfect (or humiliated if yours was not).

I guess the hope was then, as it is now in most schools, that the grades or the stickers or the treat would be a motivator for the short term, and that the habit of working hard would lead to internal motivation later.  But I'm not sure it works that way for many kids.

When new children come to Parker in about grade 3 and above, we often find that they are not used to being asked to stretch themselves or to do more than the minimum.  They have not felt the power of self-motivation - at least not in the classroom. 

As Linda Flanagan reports in the latest MindShift, "If you start kids the wrong way — say, by rewarding them with pizza — then their intrinsic motives will vanish."

So, how do we teach internal motivation? At Parker it is a very intentional process.  We give students choices that they appreciate: deciding on a book for literature circles or a topic for research.  We connect subjects like art, social studies, science and reading as when 4th graders prepare a presentation about honey bees. Or we challenge them in a STEM week to design and build a real bridge, because it's interesting and they get to experience the "why" of things.

We promote autonomy - children need to handle themselves in the classroom and the hallways with a minimum of adult-made rules.  And the children help develop the rules, because then they are vested in following them. 

We train children in critique.  They practice giving useful feedback and doing multiple drafts of a piece of work so that it reaches excellence.  Children also help to define what excellence looks like, because then they know what they are striving for. Holding your work up to the evaluation of peers is powerful stuff.  Children want to show their friends their best - and that is way more powerful and life-lasting than going for the grade.

One other big motivator for children is in the social element of learning:  children are naturally driven to be social.  Working with friends and classmates isn't always easy, but it is highly motivating and it reinforces learning.  That's why we stress cooperative teams and groups working together on projects or towards a mutual goal. 

Intrinsic motivation is probably the most useful trait that children can ever develop.  It can't be extracted from a grade.