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Dear CC!,
Our students wear uniforms to school. During CC! Week, we allowed them to wear their favorite Pillar of Character color on Pillar Friday. Now that CC! Week is well over, we are thinking about celebrating Pillar Friday at least twice a month. Do you have any celebration or material ideas to last throughout the year?
Signed,
Forever Friday
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Dear Forever Friday,
What a great idea! And what a marvelous way to continue embedding traits of CC! Week throughout the year.
Your Pillar Fridays can be a great way to get your school community, and even your city, involved. The first thing that comes to mind, and what we do in many of our schools, is to hold school-wide recognition assemblies on Fridays. Each teacher nominates a student to be recognized for a particular Pillar trait. The students do not know they are receiving the award, but the parents do. A letter is sent home beforehand and the families are asked to keep it a secret.
The students are called to the stage to shake hands with the principal and receive their award, usually a certificate. What a photo opp! A few schools have invited local business owners to be present at the ceremony, and often, they donate a book or gift certificate to the student.
A variation on this idea is to hold the same sort of recognition assembly, but rather than honoring a student, we recognize a parent or family member who displays good character. Boy, do the students get excited over that! Invite the community to your celebration and have classes perform a song or a skit. Kids tell it the best, and what a way to spread the word!
There are any more ideas and materials to be found in our Resources section of our website and in our Lesson Plan Bank. We have downloadable materials that could be sent home on your Pillar Fridays via backpack mail, or by going green on your school’s website. A parent section would be fun to include, and there are many materials and ideas for ways that parents can celebrate the Six Pillars with their children. You can also find book titles for each Pillar and every grade level that encourage the love of reading and enforce the Six Pillar traits on our website.
The ideas are endless, but if you are still stuck or need additional resources please don’t hesitate to contact any of our Program Specialists (800-711-2670, 8:30 to 5:30 Pacific Time), here at the National Office. They talk and work with teachers and others across the nation just like you and have a lot of ideas as well.
Sincerely,
The CC! National Office
Do you have a question about how to implement CC! at your school or organization? Write to us at charactercounts@jiethics.org. Be sure to include “Dear CC!” in your subject line.
Comments
At Pebble Hills Elementary we have a bulletin board to hang up character trait tickets that students earn throughout the month. At the end of the month one students ticket is randomly chosen and they receive a free lunch from their favorite place!