Every school stakeholder – students, parents, educators, and administrators – have a key role in the success of each school year. How well these stakeholders work together and treat each other with respect ultimately determines how successful the year will be.

A Compact for Excellence is a simple tool to help groups of people agree on what they need to do in order to do their best work and treat each other with care and respect. To use a Compact, create a list of expectations (see sample below) that outline what every stakeholder needs to do in order to ensure their best work can be done and everyone is treated well.

Then, ask all stakeholders the following questions:

1. Is there anything else that needs to be added to this list?
2. Is there anything that needs to be clarified?
3. Is there anything that you cannot or will not do?
4. Do we agree to work with these guidelines?

Respect for Educators: At the beginning of each school year, educators set classroom rules and expectations. This year is no different, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic you may need to update these expectations to address online learning, following health guidelines at school, or even create a Compact with parents and families so all stakeholders have clear guidelines for how everyone can do their best work and treat each other with care and respect.

Respect for Students: Whether working at home, in school, or in a hybrid setting, think about what is needed for you to do your best work and treat others well (teachers, parents, siblings, other students, etc.). Create a Compact for Excellence that outlines what all parties agree to do in order to do your best work and treat each other well, no matter the environment. You can also create a Compact with your group before beginning a new group project.

Respect for Families: Create a Compact for Excellence with your children that outlines how you will work together to ensure that everyone can do their work effectively and treat each other well. Agreements could be: 15-minute active break for every 60 minutes of work, only engage on social media during breaks, negotiate who utilizes work spaces (at home), maintain social distance and wear a mask (if back at school), and so on.

Download a Compact for Excellence

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This year, perhaps more than any other, parents, educators, and students are making incredibly challenging decisions. It’s important in these moments to assume best intentions, and trust that everyone is trying to do what they think is right and necessary to ensure a safe and impactful education experience.

In situations where there isn’t a clear and obvious answer, it’s useful to have a tool, like the Integrity-in Action Checklist, to help check our decision-making. Not every decision will pass each test below. Sometimes, the right decision isn’t fair to everyone, for example. However, checking your actions against the Integrity-in-Action Checklist can help ensure that you make good choices and maintain trust.

Trustworthiness for Educators: Even people with the best of intentions can sometimes make the wrong decision, especially when navigating the countless changes created by a global pandemic. As you work to bring students back to the classroom safely, or migrate your lessons to online delivery, use the Integrity-in-Action Checklist to make sure the choices you make are thoughtful and build trust with students, parents, and your colleagues.

Trustworthiness for Students: Students can use the Integrity-in-Action Checklist to help them make choices that could impact the health and safety of others. (“Is it fair to my classmates if I don’t follow guidelines to help stop the spread of COVID-19?”) Likewise, students working remotely can use the checklist to help make good decisions about how they engage with school. (“Do I want others to know that I was watching TV rather than paying attention to this online lesson?”)

Trustworthiness for Parents: The decisions parents make in the best interest of their child also impact the health, safety, and learning experiences of everyone else at school. Use the Integrity-in-Action Checklist to make sure the decisions you make are not only good for your children, but the teachers and other students with whom they interact. In addition, families can use the checklist to help guide the decisions their students make. “I know it’s uncomfortable to wear a mask, but let’s look at the truth test. While the mask is uncomfortable, the truth is I can wear it, get used to it, and keep myself and others safe.”

Download an Integrity-In-Action Checklist

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Character Education Objective:

• Students will collaborate with a partner to create and execute a plan for a challenge.

Content Goal:

•  Students will reflect on a created plan to improve the outcome.

Language Goal:

• Students will craft language around how to give feedback.

Purpose: Setting goals and creating a plan is only part of the equation of success. Reflection and assessment give students the opportunity to learn from experiences. This lesson is designed to give students a chance to create a plan, execute it and then reflect on their experience to improve results for the future.

Lesson:

Activity – Blindfold obstacle course (20 minutes)

Before the activity, you will want to create a very simple obstacle course outside or in a large motor space. A few simple lines of cones or something for students to weave in and out of is ideal.

1. Break the students up in pairs. Explain that you will be doing a challenge where one student will have a blindfold on and the other will be guiding them with their voice only. Then they will switch roles and try again. Before sending them to do the challenge, ask them to create a plan of how they will succeed. Ask them to think about what could make them successful. Will they use code words or sounds to separate their voice from the other team? Will they keep speaking to give constant direction or only use a few words to avoid confusion? Who will go first? Ask them to write down their plan with their partner.
2. Take the partners to the obstacle course. You likely will not have enough lines of cones for all the partner groups, so ask students to wait in a line behind the sets of cones and share the course. Get your first group of pairs ready by having one student be blindfolded. 
3. Explain that the goal is to get to the other side of the cones by weaving in and out without hitting the cones. Students are only able to use words to assist one another. Once the team reaches the other side they will switch blindfolds and the speaker will now become the walker and the walker will now be the speaker. Remind students it is a game of accuracy, not speed, and to use the plans they had created. 

Allow each pair of partners to go down and back. Bring the students back to the classroom.

Reflection (10 minutes):

Creating a plan is only half the battle to being successful. The students created a plan and executed the plan, but now it is time to reflect. Ask the pairs to think about the plan they created and how well they followed it in the challenge. Specifically ask them to think about and discuss these three things with their partner:

1. What did we do well from our plan?
2. What did we not do well from our plan?
3. What could we do better or differently next time?

As a group discuss the following questions:

Why is it important to talk about the good things after you did something?

Is it sometimes hard to talk about the things that did not go well with someone? Why?

What could you learn from those things that did not go well?Plan a time you can take the students back to the obstacle course to try again to test out their self-assessment and reflection. See if they improved on the challenge after reflecting. After, ask them to continue the reflection and think about – did it go better this time? Why or why not? 

Family Connection: 
Encourage families to think about a goal they want to complete together. It could be a project in the home, a service project or something they would like to achieve like playing more games together. Ask the families to plan how they will complete the goal and the responsibilities of each member. Once they have established the plan of how to execute their goal, encourage families to discuss a plan for reflection and assessment of that goal. That reflection plan will answer these three questions:

1. When will we reflect? 
   • Will it be after the goal is completed or throughout?
   • Be specific with the time.
2. How will we reflect?
   • How will we give each other feedback?
   • Talk about what went well and what did not.
3. How will we modify?
   • What could we do better or differently?
   • Look forward and see if you need to make changes to your current plan or for the next time.

Learn more about character education.

Students recognize the central role honesty plays in generating trust and they demonstrate their honesty in their communications in three ways:

1. Truthfulness. Students are truthful; everything they say is true to the best of their knowledge (i.e., they do not lie);
2. Sincerity. Students are sincere. This means they always convey the truth as best they can by avoiding all forms of accidental or intentional deception, distortion or trickery (e.g., it is dishonest to tell only part of the truth in an effort to create a false impression or deliberately omit important facts with the intent to create a false impression); and
3. Candor. Students know that certain relationships (e.g., parent-child, teacher-student, best friends) create a very high expectation of trust. In these relationships, honesty requires them to be candid and forthright by volunteering information to assure that they are conveying the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. (e.g., a student who accidentally spills soda on a school computer must voluntarily tell the teacher without being asked; a student who breaks her mother’s favorite vase must tell her mother voluntarily).

Character Education Objectives:

• Students will reflect on how trust is built and broken in a friendship.

Content Goal

•  Students will define trustworthy behaviors and demonstrate the impact of broken trust.

Language Goal:

• Students will write about things they can do to build their own trustworthy behaviors.

Purpose:

Trust in a relationship is not built overnight. It takes a series of trustworthy actions and behaviors to build it up. Unfortunately, one untrustworthy action can break trust instantly. This lesson is designed to demonstrate how our actions impact trust in a friendship and allow students to explore the concepts of truthfulness, sincerity and candor. 

Lesson:

Discussion (5 min)
Have a large or small group discussion about what does being trustworthy mean? Talk about what it looks like and what is does not look like. Ask students to share examples of trustworthiness they have seen.

Activity (10 min)
Build a trust tower. 

1. Give each child a few blocks. You can use Jenga blocks, building blocks or anything you have in the classroom. You want the students to be able to successfully build the tower, so be sure to plan with the right number of blocks. The best plan is to build the tower with layers of three blocks each, alternating direction on each layer. See the game Jenga for an example.
2. Ask the students one by one to come up and build a tower of trust. Each block represents something they can do to build trust. Ask students to say out loud what they can do to build trust as they place the block. Give all students an opportunity to add one or multiple blocks until you have your tower.
3. Explain to students that you have built this wonderful tower of trust. It’s much like a friendship and it takes work to build by consistently being trustworthy. Sometimes we choose actions that are not trustworthy and that will start to break down that tower.
4. Have prepared statements of untrustworthy actions from your discussion ready. Read a statement and ask one student pull one block for each statement. The student can choose any block. Continue until the tower falls.

Discussion (10 min)
Talk with students about how trust in friendships is built just like they built the tower. One by one your actions show the other person you are trustworthy. When you choose a behavior or action that is untrustworthy it starts to break down that tower. The first untrustworthy action may not knock the tower down, but it may. Could it be the second time? The third? You never know when that tower will fall and that trust will break.

Ask the students to discuss the following questions:

• Is it easier to build trust or to break it down?
• How do you rebuild trust with a friend once it has been broken?
• Are there any times it is ok to be dishonest?

Journal (5 min)
What can I do to be more trustworthy?

Family Connection:

Ask families to replicate the activity you did in class, but think about how they build trust in their family.

1. Draw a line down a piece of paper. On one side write/draw examples of how they show trustworthiness in the family. On the other side write/draw examples of what untrustworthy behaviors could be in the family.
2. You are going to build a trust tower. You will need blocks. Fifteen blocks are great, as you can lay them in 5 layers with 3 blocks in each layer while alternating directions. The game Jenga is a great reference point for this.
3. Ask each family member to place one block at a time. As they place the block, ask them to share something they can do personally to help build trust in the family. Repeating answers is ok because it is all about what that individual can do. Continue until you have a tower of trustworthy behavior.
4. Now, look at your list you made. Read your untrustworthy behaviors one at a time. As you read them, have someone pull any block from the tower. As you start to pull blocks, talk about how sometimes you choose behaviors that are untrustworthy. One time probably will not knock down the tower, but it might. Could it be two behaviors? Three? You never know when that tower of trust that you worked so hard to build in your family may fall.
5. Have a discussion with your family around the following questions:
   • How do we rebuild trust in our family once it has been broken?
   • Is it easier to build trust or destroy trust? Why?

Learn more about character education.

CC! can help schools with a resource to provide online lessons for use during this time that schools are closed. 

Teachers can share with students a 10-12 minute lesson incorporating compelling images, quotations and thought-provoking short writing and discussion activities that focus on each of the three core domains of student development: academic, social/emotional and character.

We are providing a number of these lessons free to any teacher that would like to incorporate character into their online learning experiences.

Elementary School Way To Go Lessons

Middle School Way to Go Lessons

High School Way to Go Lessons

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Character Education Objective:

• Students will understand their role in a community and the impact they have as one individual.

Content Goal:

•  Students will be able to understand their duty to protect the environment.

Language Goal:

• Students will have a discussion to generate ideas and brainstorm possible solutions.

Purpose:

There is so much power in the actions of one person. This lesson is designed for students to understand the impact of being an engaged citizen of their community. Citizenship is more than voting and obeying laws. It involves individuals taking responsibility for their duty to protect the environment. This lesson gives students time to discuss solutions to problems they see in their communities around the environment. 

Lesson:

1. Spend a week or two prior to the lesson collecting recyclable items. Encourage students to bring items from home. Food/drink containers should be washed thoroughly and dried. 
2. Watch “How to Change the World (a work in progress) | Kid President: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z7gDsSKUmU
3. Ask students to discuss with a partner the following:
4. Why do some people think it is impossible to change the world?
   • What do you think it takes to change the world?
   • Where are you a citizen? In the world, the country, the state, the community, the school, the family?
   • What does it mean to be a good citizen in those places?
   • What are some of the things that need to be changed in the places you are a citizen?
   • Brainstorm ideas that you, as an individual, could do to impact the environment?
5. Bring students back together to discuss their responses. Ask students to expand on their ideas around the impact and power of an individual in change. Challenge them to see their role in things they feel they cannot control. 
6. Discuss that one of the best ways to create change in within your own community is to start at home. Recycling and reusing is an easy task to do at home to impact all the places you are citizen (home, school, community, state, country, and world). Recycling and reusing reduces the waste we produce, the amount we contribute to the landfill and the energy we consume.
7. Make a large Pillar shape on purple (preferably) butcher paper. Give students the recycled items and glue. Ask them to make a pillar collage out of recycled material. Hang up the Pillar in classroom as a reminder of the impact one citizen can have.

Family Connection:

1. Encourage families to discuss what it means to be a citizen within their home. Use prompts such as:
   • How does a good/bad citizen in our home contribute to chores
   • How does a good/bad citizen in our home respond to rules?
   • How does a good/bad citizen in our home treat others?
   • What impact can one member of the family have on the whole family? Both positively and negatively. 
2. Recycling is an easy and powerful way an individual can make a change in their community. As a family, pick a recycling activity to engage everyone in the commitment to improve their own citizenship: https://www.naturespath.com/en-us/blog/19-activities-kids-learn-recycling/

Learn more about character education.

Download a PDF of this game card.

Character Education Objective:

• Students will engage in conversation with another student to talk about their own experience with random acts of kindness

Content Goal:

•  Students will be able to understand their moral duty to care for one another.

Language Goal:

• Students will journal about the personal benefits of performing random acts of kindness.

Purpose:

Random acts of kindness are some of the simplest ways to say you care. Not only do these acts benefit those who need it, but it has a huge benefit for those performing those acts. When you care for others, your own happiness levels increase! Filling the bucket of someone else also helps to fill your own. This lesson is designed for students to engage in random acts of kindness throughout the day and allows classrooms to celebrate those acts in a fun and exciting way!

Lesson:

1. Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwAYpLVyeFU
2. Ask students to find a partner and answer the following questions:
   1. What are some random acts of kindness you have seen?
   1. How does it feel to have someone do something kind for you?
   1. How does it feel to do an act of kindness for another person?
3. As a class, complete the empty squares on the Random Acts of Kindness Bingo with actions specific to your day.
4. Decide on the classroom celebration when you complete a bingo.
5. Play Random Acts of Kindness Bingo!
6. Have students journal about how it felt to do acts of kindness for others and the benefits you feel of being the one who helps. 

Family Connection:

Encourage families to watch the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwAYpLVyeFU.

Ask families to create a list of possible random acts of kindness they could do as family. Plan to do one act every month. This website could help families think of some good ideas: https://www.care.com/c/stories/3757/101-random-acts-of-kindness-ideas-to-practice/

Learn more about character education.

Character Education Objective: 

• Students will discuss the impact of unfair practices in the classroom. They will problem solve to make the classroom more equitable.

Content Objective:

•  Students will define fairness and work towards making their community a fairer place.

Language Objective:

• Students will journal about personal experiences around fairness.

Purpose:

Fair does not always mean equal and that can be a difficult concept for children. This lesson is designed to help students understand that fairness is everyone getting what they need and not simply everyone getting the same thing. It will also allow your students to identify, discuss and problem solve ways the classroom can be fairer for all students.

Lesson:

• Ask the students “what does fair mean?”Watch “Build Character Build Success: FAIRNESS” video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqPeMprcEDw
• Discussion Questions
  • Would it be fair for the four students in the video to all take the same test with the items they first had?
  • Why is it fair that the last student was given two items?
  • What does fair actually mean?
  • How can you determine if something is fair or not?
  • What might be unfair in our classroom? 
  • How could we make our classroom fairer?
  • How would making our classroom fairer impact all of us?
• JournalWrite/draw about a time when things were unfair for you. What would have made it fair for you? Would that have been fair to everyone else involved?

Family Connection:

Encourage families to create a compact of how they will treat one another fairly at home. In order to create the compact, discuss the following:

• What does fairness mean in our house?
• What does fairness look like?
• How will we act if things are unfair?
• How will we resolve unfair situations? 

Once you decide how your family will treat each other fairly at home, write down the plan. Ask everyone in the family to sign the compact of fairness.

Character Education Objective:

• Students will learn the power of the words they say to one another. 

Content Objective:

•  Students will create classroom expectations around the words they will use with one another.

Language Objective:

• Students will share out ideas about what responsibility sounds like.

Purpose:

Our words have the power to build others up or tear them down and we have to be accountable to the consequences of the words we say. Sometimes when students make the mistake of using their words to harm in moments of frustration or anger they believe that an apology will smooth it all over, but the damage is done. Below is a powerful lesson of how we cannot go back and undo the harm we have done, so we have the responsibility to choose our words wisely. 

Lesson:

Paper Words (10 min)

Before the activity, prepare the materials. Each student will need one clean sheet of paper 

1. Ask the students to study the clean sheet of paper. Make a big deal about how smooth and clean it is.
2. Ask the students to put the paper on the ground. Tell them to image a friend taking something that is theirs. Ask them how they would feel. Tell them to begin to stomp on the paper to show how angry they are. Explain that sometimes when we are really frustrated we use words out of anger. Each stomp is a negative thing we say to one another.
3. Ask the students to pick the paper up and say now imagine a friend tells you that you cannot play with them. Ask them how they would feel. Tell them to begin to crumple the paper into as tight of a ball as possible in their frustration. 
4. Ask the students to open the paper back up and smooth it out to how it started. 
5. Now, ask the students if it sometimes feels good to say something mean when someone upsets them. Talk about how we have the responsibility to use our words kindly, even when we are angry. Our friend in the scenarios was not kind, but our words in anger altered that paper to the point where it would never return to normal.
6. On the white board, draw a chart with two columns. Discuss that you will be coming up with ideas of the words you can use in frustration, instead of saying negative things. On one side, write “words we will say” and on the other write “words we will not say.” Ask the students to come up with both. Describing what it does not look like is just as important as describing what it looks like.
7. Explain that the class will abide by these words when there are frustration or anger with one another and that we will not use the negative words. 

Family Connection 

Encourage families to watch Words Matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1ZGijbp9go&list=PLkhTlECZJKgcyq06YGfuGyxhceC32iSio&index=7&t=0s

Give the following prompts to discuss as a family:

• Has there been a time when someone hurt you with their words?
• How do you tell someone you are frustrated or angry without using negative words?
• What words will we say in our family when someone has hurt us? What words won’t we say?

Character Education Objective:

• Students will discuss how connection increases communication and collaboration. 

Content Objective:

•  Students will discuss what the Six Pillars look like in them, their friends and the people they admire.

Language Objective:

• Students will journal about how they can actively work to connect with one another.

Purpose:

Including intentional connection time with your students is a great way to show the importance of connecting with one another. When we are connected we communicate better, collaborate more successfully and assume better intentions in one another. We often think of connection as something to check off the list at the beginning of the year a getting to know you activity, but in reality it is something that needs to happen regularly. The following activity will allow students to connect over character traits they see in themselves and those that are important to them. 

Lesson 

• Watch “Six Pillar Shuffle” and encourage the students to dance along.
• Electricity Split the students in two equal groups. Each group will be a team. Encourage them to get together and create team names. One team will get in a line standing shoulder to shoulder and all facing one way. The other team will get in another line shoulder to shoulder and facing the other team. The lines should be a few feet apart. There should be an aisle between the lines.
• If students point directly in front them, they should be pointing at only one student and one student should be pointing at them. This is their partner for the first round. Have students discuss the following question with their partner: What’s your favorite cartoon character?Now, students will play a game to get their next partner. To set up, you keep the teams in their lines and determine which side will be the start and which side will be the end of the line. At the end of the line, place an item on the ground evenly between the last two players of each team. The game is passing a high five down their team’s line from the starting side until it gets to the last person. The only rule is that you may not pass the high five until the high five is given to you.
• Once the high five hits the last person then the last person will grab the item from the ground. The first team to grab the item is the winner. The team that lost will move one person to the left. The person on the furthest left spot will walk down the aisle to the other end of the line. If you want, encourage the students to do a little Six Pillar Shuffle down the aisle! This should give students a new partner. With their new partner, have students discuss: What makes a person trustworthy? Have the students get ready to pass along the high five again.
• Once the winning team is determined, have the team that lost move one to the left again. This will give the students a new partner. Have the new partners discuss a question and then repeat the game and questions until you have answered all of them: How do you respect your friends? Who is someone in your life you think is responsible? Why? Was there a time in your life when something was unfair? How did you handle that?How has someone show you they cared for you? Who is someone you admire that shows good citizenship?
• When the game is done, talk about the power of connection. When we do these games, we are connecting with one another and finding things we have in common or how we think similarly. When we find that connection with someone we are kinder, more respectful and work better together. It’s important to take the time to connect with each other and it doesn’t always take a game. Encourage students to take the time to connect to someone they don’t know well during lunch, recess, group projects or collaboration times in the classroom. 
• Have the students journal about ways they can make connections throughout the day. Connection is not something you can do just once and check it off the list. It must be done continually. Connection is also something that doesn’t always come naturally and sometimes needs to be intentionally planned. During this journaling time, you should encourage students to think about those two things and how they will work in connection into their day more frequently.

Family Connection 

Give a brief overview of the importance of connection. Encourage families to watch a video about the power of connecting with those who may look and think differently than you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQuM5e0QGLg

Give the families the following prompts to connect around character development:

• What makes a person trustworthy?
• How do you respect your friends?
• Who is someone in your life you think is responsible? Why?
• Was there a time in your life when something was unfair? How did you handle that?
• How has someone show you they cared for you?
• Who is someone you admire that shows good citizenship?

Learn more about character education.