Character Education is something that you will be part of as a teacher - this is a fact. It won’t just be about you and students. It will be about you and colleagues, leaders, parents and many other stakeholders. All of these relationships have a moral or virtuous interaction occurring between them.
The ‘building blocks’ of character provide us, as professionals, some tangible starting points as to how to organise our thoughts around virtues and moral education.
We have discussed the point that all the virtues must be grounded in moral virtue - we must not forget the ‘moral of the story’ so to speak. Practical Wisdom (Phronesis), is that underpinning integrative virtue that helps us decide when, why, how and in what quantity and for what reasons we use competing virtues, such as honesty and compassion.
We have asked questions of ourselves as educators: what does our own morality look like, where do certain virtues sit with us, how have our experiences in schools and colleges shaped us?
When we think about character education at school, there are ‘caught’ moments of character education, ‘taught’ moments and ‘sought’ moments. We must continually seek out new and meaningful experiences for our students’ character development.