By: Ashley Winterstein
The Character Counts! Program is a national effort to increase character education by offering resources, training, and information about the Six Pillars of Character – Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship. For the past ten years in Queen Anne’s County, character coaches have been visiting local classrooms to share lessons on the Commissioner proclaimed “Pillar of the Month”.
During the month of April, character coaches are focusing their lessons on trustworthiness and the importance of self trust as well as earning the trust of others. The variety of lesson plans are endless, as some coaches read stories, discuss current events, or design hypothetical scenarios for the class to work through.
Some students may be offered the opportunity to participate in a trust exercise where they are blindfolded and a classmate must lead them safely around the classroom. This encourages mutual trust and communication between the two students. Other coaches may choose to turn to the familiar story of the boy who cried wolf to remind their students of both the significance and fragility of trust.
Michael Josephson, founder and president of the Josephson Institute which created the Character Counts! Program, is a sought after speaker and consultant on topics such as ethics and character in schools and workplaces. He also broadcasts daily commentaries on radio stations around the world, which can also be read at www.charactercounts.org.
The topic of one of his recent discussions was INTEGRITY and served as a trustworthiness lesson from an adult perspective. Josephson shared a story about Paul, a gentleman at one of his workshops who admitted his doubts about the decision he made ten years ago to leave a job rather than lie.
Josephson shared, “When his boss asked him to issue a press release containing false statements, he refused, putting his employee badge on the table.
His boss calmly handed the badge back to him saying, “Think this over. Why throw away a good job and a promising career?”
Paul gave the badge back and walked out. He was so frustrated and frightened that he had to find a private place to cry.
What’s worse, his act of moral courage was a meaningless waste. Someone else issued the press release, and his boss’s career flourished.
“It took me years to find a job as good as that one, and my family suffered,” he confided. “So what good did my integrity do for anyone?”
Paul was looking for validation of his principled stance in the wrong place. We exercise integrity not to get what we want but to be what we want.
Integrity isn’t about winning; it’s about staying whole and being worthy of self-respect and the esteem of loved ones. It’s about being honorable, not as a success strategy but as a life choice. Although Paul suffered for a time because of his moral courage, he would have suffered far worse had he stayed and betrayed his values.
While he didn’t appreciate it at the time, Paul preserved for himself and his family something far more valuable than his job – his honor. And it’s no accident that he now has a better job with no pressures to cheat or lie.”
The same situations, at different levels of moral uncertainty, arise daily in life for children and adults. Character coaches are hoping to instill in their students the values they need to be the people they want to be both now and in the future.
If you are interested in becoming a character coach or for more information about the Character Counts! program in Queen Anne’s County, please contact Jacki Carter at 410-758-6677 or jcarter@qac.org. Queen Anne’s County Character Counts! is a part of QAC Community Partnerships for Children and Families, our local management board.