Character counts year-round

Marisa O’Neil

The California Department of Education has declared October Character

Education Month, but in Newport-Mesa schools, students learn about it

all year long -- even if they don’t realize it.

Some schools call it “character,” some call it “asset building,”

and others, especially with younger children, don’t call it anything

at all. But all try to teach real-life skills that will help make

students into good children and good adults.

“Respect, solving problems, making good choices -- those are all

life skills,” Wilson Elementary School Principal Candy Sperling said.

“We realized we were developing life skills rather than just

character.”

Wilson and 15 other elementary schools in the Newport-Mesa Unified

School District are part of a grant program that provides campus

counselors to help promote a “positive school climate,” counseling

coordinator Rhonda Reed said. Counselors work with teachers,

principals and students to highlight and encourage positive character

traits in everyone, even the adults.

“Generally, we want to walk the walk and talk the talk,” Sperling

said. “As [students] go through the day, we want to make it part of

the vocabulary of every classroom.”

At Wilson, when teachers see a child doing something right, like

sharing a snack with a classmate or picking up trash, that student

gets a “paw” ticket. They can trade them in for small rewards right

away, or save them up for a big treat, such as pizza with the

principal.

Two years ago, only a few students sat down to eat with her. Last

year, Sperling said, two tables full of children joined her for

pizza.

Victoria Elementary School is focusing on a different character

trait every month. For October, they kicked things off with what

Principal Judy Laakso called the Three R’s -- respect for yourself,

respect for others and respect for the school.

“[Respect] means you help people,” 6-year-old Victoria student

Jack Sipple said. “Be a good friend. Play nicely. It makes you feel

good when you show respect.”

Students in each class decorated paper scarecrows, writing on them

ways they can show respect to each other. Teachers selected ones from

each class to hang on a special display in the cafeteria to bring

attention to the concept of respect.

“[Respect] means not teasing each other and being mean to each

other and saying bad words,” 6-year-old Alex Valladolid said. “It

hurts other people’s feelings.”

Newport Elementary School has a ticket reward system similar to

Wilson’s, and encourages community service and gets parents involved

in character education as much as possible, Principal Denise Knutsen

said. They also take advantage of the grant-sponsored counselors.

“They do get it,” Knutsen said of the school’s students. “I can

honestly say office referrals and suspensions have gone down. We’ve

had a huge decline in the number of behavior issues. We know it’s

working.”