March News from Core Virtues This month, as the winter-weary imagine shamrocks under every gravel-encrusted snowbank, the Core Virtues program highlights the virtues of compassion, faithfulness, and mercy. St. Paddy's Day (March 17) offers an opportunity to showcase the legendary saint who embodied many of those virtues, particularly faithfulness to the Irish people, returning to Ireland to preach after escaping enslavement there himself. Check out our selection of St. Patrick's Day books on our St. Patrick's Day Holiday Page . To keep your Morning Gathering current and lively, we post new literary selections almost daily. We invite you to help us. If there are virtue-themed books you love, that you don't find here, please send your suggestions to us at
[email protected] . What's New? Virtue Is Its Own Reward! We want to celebrate your successes by telling your stories. Send us a true story of how the Core Virtues program has improved or impacted the lives of children and/or adults in your school (with photos, even better). If we publish it on our new testimonial page (Virtue, Its Own Reward), we'll send your school one hundred dollars (which perhaps you'll spend on great literature for your library)! Who says virtue doesn't pay? Focus on Core Virtues Schools: Will Carleton Academy, Hillsdale, MI Will Carleton Academy, a public charter school for 282 children in Hillsdale County, Michigan has been using the Core Virtues program for 22 years! Director Colleen Vogt says "our families talk about the program by name. We are proud to be a Core Virtues School. It has been foundational for us and has had amazing impact." Named after the Michigan "poet of the people" Will Carleton, WCA is both a Core Virtues and Core Knowledge school. Director Vogt kicks off the virtue of the month at an assembly early each month, reading to the gathered K-8 group. She and the teachers at WCA love that the program (which teachers continue in the classroom) gives them a way to speak with students about the things that matter for character and academic performance. "I closed the assembly today telling the kids to be diligent in those tests they're about to take and to persevere. We're all on the same page." She credits the program with helping to create a safe and nurturing environment for the school. WCA serves a large Special Ed population, which is integral and respected here. Appropriately for March, Will Carleton's most famous poem Over the Hill to the Poorhouse ( 1879) is about a widowed mother who labors to raise twelve children, all of whom move away from home and leave her alone and ultimately to the poorhouse! She wishes her children had gone to a Core Virtues school! Updating the Core Virtues Schools List We know you're out there! Please let us know if your school is using the Core Virtues program. We'd like to list you on our Schools page, so you can connect with others using the program. Email us at:
[email protected] Telling Our Stories “For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad….” The traditional wedding vows lay bare the meaning of faithfulness: to stand by the beloved in bright and bountiful times, and in privation and peril. Read More
