So, like most educators, I spend lots of time trying to instill in them virtues like honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness, and kindness. But building character is more complicated than teaching math or manners. It involves the heart as well as the head. The goal is to make good thoughts and conduct a matter of habit. I want the children to know what is good, want what is good, and do what is good.

We teach character by promoting and developing the values and ethical virtues that make up a good person – trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. We need to be sure kids understand what each of these traits looks like.

We entrench these values by enforcing them, by backing up our rhetoric with appropriate consequences. What you allow, you encourage. Advocating values means passionately and relentlessly stating our commitment to good character so our children have no doubt what we want for them and expect from them.

Finally, and most crucial, we must teach positive values by example, modeling the virtues we want to see in our children. We teach values by the way we deal with pressures, frustrations, fatigue, and other everyday actions, especially what we say and do when we think no one’s looking.