Our Centers for Ethics:

Weekly writing prompt

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August 31 - September 6, 2009 Welcome back to school! Now is the perfect time for students to lay the foundation for a successful school year. Encourage students to set goals for the year. Then, through writing exercises, help them prioritize their responsibilities and develop a plan to achieve their goals.

Write or discuss it! Foundations for Life gives teachers an easy way to improve students' critical thinking and composition skills. Each of these weekly prompts comes with a maxim illuminating an ethical issue. Students can analyze it and apply it to current events and their own lives, through discussion or writing. Each prompt also references at least one of the Six Pillars of Character: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. As a result, students can easily tie the author’s words to community values. Suggestions for using the prompts:

• Read the biographies in the Teacher’s Resource.
• Present the maxim to the students.
• Briefly discuss:
  •   What did the author mean?
  •   Can you think of ways the statement applies to something in your life?
• Point out the Pillar related to the maxim.
• Present the writing prompt to the students and have them answer these questions in their draft book or other format.

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Elementary level

"Think forward! Concentrate on who you want to be and where you want to go, not on who you were or where you’ve been."
– Michael Josephson, American ethicist, author, and radio commentator (b. 1942)

Focus Pillar: Responsibility
Earn your gold stars! Think about what you want to accomplish this year, and make a list of your goals and priorities. Then list all of your responsibilities, or the things that people depend on you to do. These include homework, chores, playing with friends and going to sports practices. If you fulfill your responsibilities, will you have a better chance of achieving your goals?

Secondary level

"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."
– Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, inventor and statesman (1706-1790)

Focus Pillar: Responsibility
Many celebrities have personal assistants who schedule their events, meetings and appointments. If you had a personal assistant, how would this person develop your schedule to make you successful and balance all of your responsibilities?

Think of the demands on a teenager — home, school, sports, friends — and write about how to balance all of your priorities and achieve your goals.

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