Our campus counselor, who is responsible for teaching Character Education, retired at the end of last year. She used the curriculum provided through Chick-Fil-A called Core Essentials.  We would include the information in our daily morning announcements, and she would provide an assembly of sorts once a month to the students. Due to her retirement, I obtained permission from my principal to teach the Big Idea of the month during technology time, so the first week of the month will be focused on the Core Essentials Big Idea of the Month. For the month of September, the Big Idea is Initiative.  Students learned that Initiative means seeing what needs to be done, and doing it. Students were introduced to the definition through this video:

Students then formed six groups. Each table had a large sheet of paper and a colored marker with one of these six settings written on it: Home, Classroom, Cafeteria, Playground, Park, and World. Students were given two minutes to collaborate with their group members to decide on one way to show initiative in that setting. After two minutes, they took their marker with them to the next setting to discuss what initiative would look like in that setting.

When all the responses were recorded, we discussed the four kinds of workers in the world: 1) the kind that sees what needs to be done, and does it without being told 2) the kind that asks the boss, what do you want me to do now? 3) the kind that waits until they are told to do a job before doing it, and 4) the kind that the boss cannot ever find to tell them what to do.

Here are the responses from each class:

Make your own digital slideshow

Scenes from the week: