February News from Core Virtues
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This month, when we celebrate Presidents' Day and Black History Month, many opportunities present themselves to train young hearts and minds to the civic virtues of justice, honesty, loyalty, and love of country. See our new suggestions on our February page, our Presidents' Day page, as well as our February Heroes 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].
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 Principal Bob Hamm | A fruitful visit to Old Town Academy (OTA) in San Diego, California. OTA, a K-8 charter school for 270 students, has been using the Core Virtues program for nine years. Principal Bob Hamm (who employed the Core Virtues program for nearly two decades at his former school) says: "This is our anti-bullying program. We have almost zero bullying here. Core Virtues take care of that. It works." The school focus this month was loyalty, and since our visit was at the beginning of the month, teachers led the children in energetic discussions of what it meant to be loyal: to stand up for your friends or your beliefs, for example. And how did we see loyalty at work in Charlotte's Web, which the class had read. Which characters were loyal and how? Teachers had lots of quality picture books lined up to read at Morning Gathering for the weeks ahead. | |
Old Town Academy is a Core Knowledge school, and CVF President Mary Beth Klee was mightily impressed by the big worlds of the children. When asked by their teacher (Miss Klum) where they would go, if these San Diego second graders could travel anywhere in the world, answers were: Paris, Athens, Sparta, Australia, Montana, San Francisco Museum, and Lego-land....These are well educated children with high aspirations! | |
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Storyline Online has done a great job this month highlighting books for Black History Month. If you haven't visited here in a while, check out their February offerings here.
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Sponsored by the SAG-AFTRA Foundation (Screen Actors Guild), this free service is available on Youtube or Schooltube. It offers many of the books we recommend expertly read by professional actors with the original artwork sometimes animated. Their clips can be projected in a classroom or read on an ipad with or without the text on the pages. | |
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] | |
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John T. E. Cribb, the author of Old Abe, a novel about Abraham Lincoln,(forthcoming in Fall 2020) is the author of this month's blog. Read More
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