During the day she works at director Robert Zemeckis's film company, Imagemovers Digital, which has produced such animated moves as Monster House and Polar Express. Before that, she was the graphic design art director for director George Lucas at Industrial Light & Magic.

With bullying being such an issue on school campuses, we asked Otoshi what she hopes kids, parents, and teachers will learn from the book, how images can instill character, and why a good children's book is like haiku.

• An application cover sheet printed out from the CEP website after you have entered your school or district information, signed by the principle or superintendant.
• A separate page detailing the demographics of the applying group, i.e. students and faculty, and other application information.
• A 7-page narrative that explains how your school or district’s character-education program exemplifies the Eleven Principles.
• A 25-page portfolio that provides supporting evidence for the narrative.
• A self-assessment score sheet that shows the results of your school or district’s self-assessment using the Quality Standards.

Mali spent nine years in the classroom teaching English, history, and math and has performed and lectured for teachers around the world. His one-man show "Teacher! Teacher!" won the jury prize for best solo performance at the 2001 U. S. Comedy Arts Festival.

One of the original spoken-word artists to appear on HBO's "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry," Mali is considered by many to be the most successful poetry slam strategist of all time, having led six of his seven national poetry slam teams to the finals and winning the
championship himself a record four times.

To inspire returning and new teachers for the year ahead, we asked Mali what students have taught him, about the miracle of education, and why all poets love geometry.

Many schools are implementing character-education frameworks into their curriculum to meet "essential life skills" standards. To analyze their program's effectiveness and to receive funding for it, they need data. Too little info can hurt, but bad data can be worse.

And now, we have a mess on our hands.

CHARACTER COUNTS! works best when it is ubiquitous. Kids learn about the Six Pillars of Character in the classroom, but it’s important that the message is reinforced in sports and after-school programs, in the home, and in the job market. Birmingham is determined to succeed.

Art Teacher Suzette Morrow of Potterville High School knows how to make character education fun. Students in two of her classes recently completed a series of large murals depicting the Six Pillars of Character in creative ways.

She and her husband are thinking about adopting a child and have been looking into their education options. Not very promising choices. But what if she saw things in a different light?

We’re talking about MySpace.com accounts.

Last August, the number of account holders tipped the 100 million mark, and its chief rival, Facebook.com, has more than 58 million active users. Unfortunately, the massive popularity and proliferation of such social networking sites, which are open to all, have created a deluge of problems from bad (one third of teens in America have been targeted by cyber bullies according to a survey by the Pew Internet American Life Project) to worse (sexual predators use the sites to approach and kidnap youngsters) to unthinkable (disturbing comments on a members’ sites have led some kids to
commit suicide).

The National School Boards Association encourages educators to find ways to take advantage of online social networks because students use them so much.