The stories of Sarah and Oliver capture one of the great frustrations teachers face in schools: we are asked to educate the whole child, but we are often given a report card designed to measure only part of the child. Every student needs to develop the habits, values, and character traits necessary to become a capable, responsible adult—not merely someone who can solve for x and then lose their car keys.
Some students arrive at school already well prepared in this department. Their families have spent years teaching responsibility, kindness, perseverance, honesty, and the other qualities that make life work a little more smoothly and Thanksgiving dinner a little less interesting. But other students need feedback on the very things that challenge them most—their character and values. If a student struggles with responsibility, resilience, cooperation, or courage, it seems rather strange to notice the problem every day and then issue a report card that politely pretends it does not exist.
And isn’t values education good for everyone? For students already receiving these lessons at home, schools can reinforce and strengthen the message; for those who have missed some of those lessons, schools can help fill in the gaps. That is why character deserves a place alongside academics on the report card—because raising capable human beings is probably at least as important as raising people who can calculate the area of a trapezoid.
We welcome you to the conversation. Please let us know that you care by liking comments, forwarding posts, or joining in our dialogue at johnzurn.com. We would love to hear your own “Stories From the Classroom….”.
From our first posting:
“As parents and teachers, we need to reclaim our traditional role as influencers of our children – not by shouting louder than the influencers our children discover online, but by stressing ideas that are more important than fancy shoes and snappy TikTok tunes. We need to emphasize traits that everyone agrees children will honor. We need to convince our children that the people who are most important to them have a better understanding of what it takes to be successful in life.”
#charactereducation #successtraits #parentingtips #homeschooling #teachertips