The development of character is a perennial concern. In response to social changes, character education has undergone various incarnations. The CAEC promotes a timeless, proactive and comprehensive approach, and considers character formation a lifelong enterprise.
The CAEC offers three types of professional development programs:
Teachers Academies
Mini-Academies
CAEC Institutes
The Teachers Academy
A five-day intellectual retreat for educators, the Teachers Academy invites participants to engage in dialogue, reflection and writing about selected great texts and to apply them to curricular and school-wide character education.
The Academy answers three questions:
1. What is character education anyway?In addition to providing an intellectual history of character education, CAEC Scholars introduce participants to the Internalizing Virtue Framework. This Framework is based on the premise that educators can and should help students move from an awareness of virtue to the internalization of good dispositions.
2. How do we come to understand character development?Scholars invite participants to examine various sources of wisdom (from classical texts in the humanities to children’s literature and contemporary film), to engage in fruitful dialogue, and to reflect upon their responsibility as educators of students’ minds and characters. Breakout sessions foster collegial discussion and planning. The content and the experience are designed to promote habits of study, reflection and professional practice that participants can sustain when they return to their respective school communities.
3. How do we move from theory to practice?Exemplary teachers demonstrate how lessons and units can foster reflection, good judgment and responsible action. Participants are given the opportunity to assess their school’s culture, consider strategies for positive change and apply principles learned to lessons/units they will teach.
The CAEC has directed numerous Academies in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Georgia, and South Carolina.
Sample Academy Topics
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Social ResponsibilityFriendship and Character in FilmGandhi and the Education of the Whole SelfPlato’s Allegory of the Cave and Three-Part SoulClifton Taulbert’s Eight Habits of the Heart
To arrange for an Academy, ten months lead-time is necessary.
The Mini-Academy
Half day mini-academies are reunions for Academy participants, who welcome the opportunity to share teaching experiences and to become intellectually recharged. Typically, Mini-Academies occur in the fall or spring semesters of the academic year, following an Academy that has taken place during the summer. A CAEC scholar meets with Academy participants to discuss their teaching or Academy-related work and to explore a relevant theme.
To arrange for a Mini-Academy, three months lead-time is necessary.
The CAEC Institute
CAEC Institute -- March 12, 2003
Working from the CAEC’s guiding texts, Building Character in Schools (Ryan and Bohlin, 1999) and Internalizing Virtue: An Instructional and Schoolwide Framework (Bohlin, Farmer & Ryan, 2000), our one-day CAEC Institute explores the following:
The context of character educationUniversal ethical principlesCurriculum integration
Our CAEC Institutes whet the appetite of those who are beginning to think seriously about the ethical implications of their leadership in classrooms and schools. Those who have participated in the CAEC Summer Teachers Academy find that the CAEC Institute complements that experience.
To arrange for a CAEC Institute, six months lead-time is necessary.
A sampling of school districts that have participated in CAEC professional development:
Bourne Public Schools -- Bourne, MA
Pueblo #60 School District, Pueblo, CO
Fair Haven Schools -- Fair Haven, NJ
Sunset Ridge School District #29, Northfield, IL
Middletown School District -- Middletown, NJ
Ware/Amherst Public Schools -- Ware & Amherst, MA
Pleasanton Unified School District, Pleasanton, CA
A sampling of individual schools that have collaborated with the CAEC:
Brighton High School -- Brighton, MA
Montclair Kimberley Academy -- Montclair, NJ
Connery Elementary School -- Lynn, MA
Pine Street Elementary School -- Spartanburg, SC
Culver Academies -- Culver, IN
Princeton Charter School - Princeton, NJ
Kent Denver School -- Englewood, CO
Washington Community School -- Lynn, MA
Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter School -- Franklin, MA
posted by AcrosticGuy @ 6:55 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home