Teaching Character through the Curriculum

By David B. Wangaard, Ed.D.

The Commissioner of Education in Connecticut recently issued a call to action encouraging teachers to include lessons about good character within reading, writing, and speaking assignments. The commissioner highlighted the importance of integrating character lessons into the school curriculum in order for meaningful character education to occur. Advocates of character education welcome the commissioner's proclamation.

Comprehensive character education clearly requires the thoughtful and deliberate integration of character lessons within the regular academic curriculum. To help teachers accomplish this goal, there are many resources available. Two literature-based programs will be described here to help put ethics in action.

The Developmental Studies Center¹ (DSC) has published a series of resources which provide K-8 teachers grade-appropriate program manuals, annotated bibliographies, and teacher's guides for individual books. The DSC program encourages the practice of vital reading skills while including specific character, social, and emotional objectives. The program manuals offer useful strategies for use with DSC materials, while DSC annotated bibliographies contain reviews of dozens of grade-level books identifying specific character themes appropriate for read-aloud and partner reading. In addition, the DSC teacher guides include background material on specific books, reading activities, activities to connect the book's theme to the home, and summary activities.

Language arts and literature teachers in grades 4-12 should be aware of the excellent Novel/Drama Curriculum published by the Center for Learning² (CL). CL has published over 230 titles which link values and literature. Lessons cover academic objectives, character themes, and literary analysis. CL units describe strategies that stimulate students to think about the literature's content, their own lives, their values, and those of society. In addition, each unit includes 10 to 12 lesson plans designed for a 45-minute class, concise teacher notes including relevant background notes, clear objectives and detailed procedures, reproducible handouts, ideas for writing topics, presentations and evaluation. Master teachers from across the country have contributed to these units which include most literature titles common to traditional school reading lists. Teachers can find out more about CL materials at www.centerforlearning.org.

SEE encourages every teacher to consider how to integrate character lessons into the objectives of their academic courses. The literature resources described here represent just two of the many effective strategies to achieve this goal. To expand access to effective strategies, SEE is developing a web resource which will post successfully implemented character-education lesson plans by grade and content area. If you would like to contribute a lesson plan that has proven effective for you, please contact us by mail or through our website at www.ethicsed.org. 

¹ DSC, 2000 Embarcardero, Suite 305, Oakland, CA 94606.
² Center for Learning, P.O. Box 910, Villa Maria, PA 16155.