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Character Words of the Month (pdf)
Columbia County endeavors to use existing resources, structures, and strengths to help students make the right decisions for the right reasons and to create positive influences that extend beyond the school walls. Opportunities include school activities like assemblies which establish a school climate promoting learning, character and conduct; prevention activities to help establish standards for student conduct; focus on student attendance; Honors Days for recognition of students; and using the school calendar to plan important events and focuses. A system calendar has been developed by representatives from each school, which provides for an emphasis on a selected character trait each month. (See link above.)
Parents and community representatives are engaged in partnerships to support the principles of character and conduct that help our students make good decisions. In turn, our school communities become safer, better disciplined, and more welcoming places to learn and work.
The State Board of Education mandates a comprehensive character education program for levels K-12. Twenty-seven character traits are addressed.
Citizenship
1. Tolerance: The allowable deviation from a standard. Indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own.
2. Patriotism: Support of the U. S. Constitution and love for the United States of America with zealous guarding of their authority and interests.
3. Courage: Willingness to face danger with determination.
4. Loyalty: Steadfastness or faithfulness to a person, institution, custom, or idea to which one is tied by duty, pledge, or a promise.
5. Respect for the Natural Environment: Care for and conservation of land, trees, clean air and pure water, and of all living inhabitants of the earth.
6. Respect for the Creator: Our most basic freedoms and rights are not granted to us from the government but they are intrinsically ours; i.e., the Constitution does not grant Americans the right of freedom of speech, it simply recognizes that each of us is born with that right. This is to say that the founders of the republic recognized a higher authority, a power greater than themselves that endowed every human being with certain unalienable rights that no government or legal document could ever revoke or take away. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson names this life force that permeates the universe and from which our unalienable rights stem the “creator,” “nature’s God,” and the “supreme judge of the world.” If we are to respect life, the natural rights of all people, and the authority, which the founders based, their legal opinions on concerning our separation from Great Britain, then there must be a respect for that creator from which all our rights flow. This cannot be interpreted as a promotion of religion or even as a promotion of the belief in a personal God, but only as an acknowledgement that the intrinsic worth of every individual derives from no government, person or group of persons, but is something that each of us is born with and which no thing and no one can ever deprive us of.
Respect for Others
7. Cheerfulness: Courtesy and politeness in action of speech.
8. Compassion: 9. Kindness: 10: Generosity: Concern for suffering or distress of others and response to their feelings and needs.
11. Courtesy: 12. Cooperation: Recognition of mutual interdependence with others resulting in polite treatment and respect for them.
13. Honesty: Truthfulness and sincerity.
14. Fairness: 15: Sportsmanship: Freedom from favoritism, self-interest, or indulgence of one’s likes and dislikes; abiding by the rules of a contest and accepts victory or defeat graciously.
16. Patience: Not being hasty or impetuous.
Respect for Self
17. Perseverance: 18: Diligence: Adherence to actions and their consequences.
19. Self control: 20: Virtue: Exercising authority over one’s emotions and actions.
21. Cleanliness: Good habits of personal hygiene and grooming.
22. Punctuality: Being on time for attendance and tasks.
23. Creativity: Exhibiting an entrepreneurial spirit; inventiveness; originality; not bound by the norm.
24. School pride: Playing a contributing role in maintaining and improving all aspects of a school’s environment, programs and activities within the context of contributing to the betterment of the city, county, and state.
25. Citizenship
26. Respect for Others
27. Respect for Self
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