The Connected Classroom

CHARACTERplus, celebrating it’s 25th year, is a program of Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis. CHARACTERplus works to advance the cause of character education and sustain its impact on the lives of educators and students. CHARACTERplus team members work with educators, students, and organizations like the St. Louis Cardinals* to promote the cause. This year, they are holding their 19th annual national conference on character education. Guest blogger Suzy Ward shares more -

Hi, I am Suzy Ward and am the Conference Coordinator for CHARACTERplus’ Character Education Conference. It is June 17-19^th and conveniently located at the St. Charles Convention Center. This is the 19^th annual national conference and promises to be our most exciting conference yet! Although it is held in St. Louis, it attracts over 500 people from across the country and even Taiwan. It is a great vacation destination too.

We have international experts in the field of Character Education. We have new keynote presenters like Michele Borba, and Hal Urban is back by popular demand. Plus, we have over 60 breakout sessions to meet your needs from enhancing school climate and culture, intrinsic motivation to service learning. You will hear directly from students, State and National Schools of Character to other Early Childhood through High School educators.

Are you looking for more in-depth training in Bullying Prevention or Character Education and Common Core State Standards? Spend the day at one of our pre-conferences June 17^th. Each one is from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. at the St. Charles Convention Center; this includes lunch and parking at no additional costs. Pre-conferences include:

New Character Education and the Common Core State Standards- Across the nation schools are focused on preparing for the Common Core. You understand its importance, but are you asking yourself: now what? While most associate it with Language Arts and Math, there are many opportunities to integrate Character Education. This session is your opportunity to hear presenters from Kansas, South Carolina and Missouri on how they have integrated these two critical initiatives.  Each state will present then have a panel discussion. They will address College and Career Readiness, Social and Emotional skills, productive persistence skills to curriculum for the 21st century learners.

Bullying Prevention The CHARACTERplus Way- How do you create a culture of allies? How do you respond to bullying actions? This workshop will provide research-based,  field-tested answers to tailor to your own school needs. Presenters Tami Bopp and Diane Stirling have trained and coached educators for more than a decade  in creating cultures that increase belonging, autonomy (student voice) and competence. They have trained adults and worked with students  in bullying prevention. Most recently, they have worked with Stan Davis, author of Schools Where Everyone Belongs. Participants will learn how to assess their culture, build staff to student and peer-to-peer relationships, increase empathy, survey students, listen and respond effectively to what they report anonymously, develop a response team and a rubric-based system of consequences.

As a thank you to those who support character education, including bullying prevention, service learning, and caring school communities, CHARACTERplus would like to invite you to leave a comment at the end of this post on your favorite CHARACTERplus program. Do you promote character education in your school? Are you able to attend the annual conference and its precons? What moves you to be involved?

* Leave a comment; the first 25 to share their thoughts receive 2 tickets to the Monday, April 29th game at Busch Stadium – see the St. Louis Cardinals play the Cincinnati Reds! Be sure when you leave your comment to give your full name and email address (email address only visible to blog administrator / ticket distributor). We’ll let you know how/where to pick up your tickets before the game. One comment per person, please, so we can share  these tickets with as many fans of character education as we can!

Tags: Character Education Conference, CHARACTERplus, Common Core State Standards