![]() “The first stage of curriculum development, is creating a curriculum of care” …Harold Brathwaite One of the main reasons I chose to switch careers was that I love the challenge of encouraging students to build their own characters. I believe that we can effectively encourage students to build character by teaching the importance of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence includes all the interactive strategies that guide students with their character building. Too often, we focus on the importance of I.Q. results and we are not spending enough time teaching strategies for moral & emotional intelligence. Why should we teach moral intelligence? The answer lies in creating safe school environments with teachers who demonstrate empathy, reliability through solid morals, values and attitudes for ALL students. Many youth are at risk through high divorce rates, abandonment, and relocating families due to employment. Today's schools are working hard to help students build a solid model of moral intelligence. The last school that I worked in promoted the "Seven Habits". I noted that the "Six Pillars" from Character Counts is also still popular. I remember my own children watching these six pillars being sung by Barney. What made these six pillars memorable was the way the characters were presented. I believe that these prompts for moral intelligence are critical for character development. It does not matter which model you teach, but how you teach them. To teach moral intelligence, teachers need to talk about moral intelligence first. Implementing a program that celebrates positive attitudes, growth and development is key for students to learn moral intelligence. So, what would be some strategies to teach moral intelligence? As a school culture, service learning projects offer students a real, rich and relevant way to practice their moral intelligence! Another idea is to have students host monthly showcases or assemblies as an excellent way to promote healthy moral intelligence. Personally, I find value in a "pay it forward" program, where the students can give unanimous and random acts of kindness to one another. I also find value in personal reflection of moral intelligence through art forms that show self-expression, patience and moral preservation. One of the most destructive forms of moral degrading is bullying. I have witnessed this in both school settings and on-line. School environments need to continue to make bullying and cyberbullying a priority issue and address this issue through education, teacher awareness training, plans of action and student consequences. I believe that moral intelligence can be taught to students by keeping it simple and consistent. After all, the discouraged student is really looking for someone who gives a dam! If you or someone you know is struggling with their emotional health, find solid advice from BetterHelp, an online platform with over 780,000 followers. Photo credit: http://www.craveonline.ca/mandatory/1067023-weird-news-latvian-man-says-a-beaver-took-him-hostage
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