Respect, responsibility, trust, fairness, caring, and courage — these six values, agreed upon by a committee of parents, teachers and administrators provide the foundation of our Character Education Program.

Shared values, acknowledged and modeled, have a special power to change our relationships, our society and our lives. A clear, consistent common language to describe our expectations in terms of these values is the cornerstone of our program.

The principles represented by this common language in turn act as filters through which to process decisions. In short, systematically using these values can dramatically improve the quality of our decisions, and thus our character.

The left hand puzzle pieces contain more specific information about each Village Value. Click on the value you would like to learn more about.

The other piece of our program is 1) our weekly Community Circles, an opportunity for each class to discuss anything of importance to them within the framework of the Village Values; and 2) our bi-monthly Family Circles, an opportunity for a group of children from each grade level to meet with two or three adults on campus to discuss books or work on projects or even play community building games that are reflective of our Character Education program.

As we discussed what we wanted this program to provide, we considered many different values, ultimately settling on these six – five of which coincide with the Six Pillars of Character as defined by the Josephson Institute of Ethics and their Character Counts program. We encourage you to visit their website (www.josephsoninstitute.org) for interesting information on the subject of character education.

What follows is a short explanation of each of the Village Values (borrowed heavily from the Josephson Institute) and what they mean to us.

While we expect that you have been living and teaching these values to your children all along, we hope you will join us in incorporating this common language in your everyday life.