By: Ashley Winterstein

The teachers and staff at Centreville Elementary School have been working diligently for nine years now to incorporate character education into the daily lives of their students. Through reminders on the morning announcements, character based student-written class rules, positive referrals, and many other avenues, the staff strives to use every day events as opportunities to develop the character of their students.

Another way they have found to encourage their students to practice good character is to include them in decorating their own classroom doors. Each class is offered the opportunity to join in the Six Pillars of Character Door Decorating Contest during the month of October and decorate their door to represent one of the Six Pillars of Character (Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship).

A rubric was created to score each decorated door based on qualities such as presentation, information provided, creativity, and neatness. The judges, Jacki Carter, Character Counts! Coordinator, and Mary Ruth Meredith, Co-Chair of the Character Counts! Advisory Council, then viewed and scored each door. The following classes were recognized for their outstanding doors:

Pre-Kindergarten: Cooper (Respect)
Kindergarten: Ebersole (Caring)
1st Grade: Coursey (Citizenship)
2nd Grade: Schilling (Trustworthiness)
Specials: O’Dell (All Pillars)

Carter admitted that it was difficult to choose only one door for each grade level, as the students did such a great job representing the character traits in eye-catching ways. All the classroom doors will remain decorated to serve as daily reminders of ways to display good character.

The Character Counts! Advisory Council would like to thank the teachers, staff, and students for participating so enthusiastically in this project and congratulate the entire school for their recent recognition from the Maryland Center for Character Education as an Honorable Mention State School of Character!

If you would like more information about the Character Counts! program, 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.