Incorporating Moral Education through Holistic Principles into your Classroom

This website is for educators that wish to explore and integrate Moral Education through holistic principles into their classrooms. There are many character education programs and resources online. However, through this website, I hope to help educators infuse moral education into their curriculum rather than a separate program or a subject. It is my hope and aim that this website will be useful to educators around the world who value moral education.

This website will provide you with some resources to implement three key aspects of Character Education:

Service Learning
Local and Global Partnerships
Socio-Emotional Learning
Reflective Practice

Holistic Approaches to Moral Education

“Effective character education is not adding a program or set of programs to a school. Rather it is a transformation of the culture and life of the school.”

-—Dr. Marvin Berkowitz

Popular wisdom holds that the best way to implement character education is through a holistic approach that integrates character development into every aspect of school life. This approach is also known as whole-school reform, and it’s a biggie. Here are some of the distinguishing features of the holistic model presented by Elkind & Sweet (2020) :

1) Everything in the school is organized around the development of relationships between and among students, staff, and community.

2) The school is a caring community of learners in which there is a palpable bond connecting the students, the staff, and the school. (see Build a Caring Community, below)

3) Social and emotional learning is emphasized as much as academic learning.

4) Cooperation and collaboration among students are emphasized over competition.

5) Values such as fairness, respect, and honesty are part of everyday lessons in and out of the classroom.

6) Students are given ample opportunities to practice moral behavior through activities such as service-learning (see below).

7) Discipline and classroom management concentrate on problem-solving rather than rewards and punishments.

8) The old model of the teacher-centered classroom is abandoned in favor of democratic classrooms where teachers and students hold class meetings to build unity, establish norms, and solve problems.

Resource:

Marvin Berkowitz, as quoted in the Character Education Informational Handbook & Guide, North Carolina Dept. of Public Instruction (Raleigh, NC: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/charactereducation/handbook/pdf/content.pdf)