Teachers can assist in Creating an
Ethical Community by:
1.Help students know each other through activities such as:
- Sharing personal stories
- Provide a class directory
- Structure weekly optional seating plans
- Initiate a "Laws of Life" essay contest in your class (you can get all the information you need from the ethic link Laws of Life from web site www.ethicsusa.com)
2.Teach students to respect, affirm, and care about each other.
- By respecting each of them for who they are
- Post "Caring Community" Sign in their class (Gene Bedley has designed 30 teen posters that assist teachers in promoting ethics)
- Support all the efforts your school leaders make in promoting Respect in your school.
- Support a Teen Respect Seminar to train all the natural Helpers and leaders in the school.
- Start a character thought of the week around the meaning of Respectful Listening
(Monday Memos are available in the Values in Action! Guide.)
3. Help students develop a feeling of membership in and responsibility to and for the group.
- Discuss the things that enhance learning and those things that destroy learning. Create a Class Mission from the things that benefit student learning and have entire class sign.
- Develop class cohesion and identity through traditions and symbols. Help kids see they are part of a larger diverse group of individuals that are all different.
- Include a lesson in your class on "Classroom Manners" (you can get the lesson from the Values in Action! Newsletter titled Teenagers and Manners they really do go together. by Hal Urban (You can find the newsletter at www.ethicsusa.com)
- Develop each student's feeling of being a unique and valued member of the class community.
Gene Bedley
National Educator of the Year
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