The project eventually will provide sample lessons for districts throughout North Carolina. But just how to teach ideas as vague as respect and courage can be a quandary for teachers. Dixon Smith of the Character Development Group in Chapel Hill said one thing teachers want to avoid is simply heaping another program on top of everything else they do. The group, founded less than two years ago, collects information about how schools nationwide teach character, publishes the ideas and conducts workshops. Ideally, Triangle educators said, schools weave character education throughout already existing studies.
Literature provides many opportunities.
But so do other subjects and the folks who teach them. But that didn't satisfy Christesen's seventh-graders, who had been talking about kindness and respect. So, the students devised a new ending in which the creatures from Venus take up a collection to send the girl back to Earth. They were really into it. The Durham school system isn't providing specific curriculum for teachers, but instead is leaving the task up to individual schools.