The bulk of my career and all of my Headships were in kindergarten through 8th grade independent schools- a fact that I frequently proclaimed kept me at arm’s length from most issues connected to sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll so prevalent in the high school years.  Though there were occasional interludes, for the most part, I was still working on basic skills and character development while my high school colleagues had to deal with adolescents working on self-discovery and experimentation on their way to adulthood.

It was not that I had zero adolescent issues in school, but rather that the oldest students in my schools were always fourteen-year-old children.  We expected strong school leadership from them and they did not have ninth through twelfth graders above to distract them into other directions.  Our student leaders were still children and the true crossover into adulthood would only begin once they entered ninth grade in another school.

Working with children, even in an age where popular culture wanted to treat children as young adults, was always a joy.  For the most part, children will do what you ask them to do.  In some ways, this absolved us from the responsibility of teaching anything as complicated as life itself.  Who could fault us if we took missteps?  In other ways, it forced us to think deeper and better about success and to effectively apply what we wanted to say to our youngest students about life.

In my experience, we talk a lot about the principals of character and leadership in schools, but do not actively teach them.  Instead, children today discover character and leadership through memes and the enticing visual illusions of technology.  In a polarized political atmosphere where the very essence of our democracy is at risk, we need to insure that future generations of Americans are educated for character and leadership, the two fundmental elements of an American education, every schoiol should be tecahing.

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Coming Next Wednesday: Stories from the Classroom- Albert

 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.”

John Zurn began his educational career teaching fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children in K through 8th grade independent school settings.   He went on to serve as Head of School for three independent schools over a twenty-eight year period.   John has written a book on a comprehensive school-wide character education program which was published in 2022 and updated in 2024.  He is currently working on a book directed towards teaching Traits for Success to students in grades 4 through 8.

#charactereducation #successtraits #parentingtips #homeschooling #teachertips