Character Counts!

Welcome to
CHARACTER COUNTS!

Strategies and resources to help improve students’ character, social-emotional, and academic skills and improve school culture.

The Six Pillars of Character

What We Do

CHARACTER COUNTS! focuses on building students’ character, social-emotional, and academic skills, while shaping a positive school culture. Our flexible PK-12 framework is based on:

the Six Pillars of Character (trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and good citizenship),
our TEAM approach to character education, and
practical, research-based instructional strategies.

How We Can Help

We’ve been working for more than 30 years to create a flexible framework to help PK-12 educators and students develop good character and create positive school cultures.

Using research and educator feedback, we’ve created a pathway of best practices for schools to meet academic, character, social-emotional, and school culture goals.

Days Until

CHARACTER COUNTS! Week
October 15-22, 2023

☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5

Success Stories

"What we appreciate the most about CC! framework is the applicability, meaning that we can see the Pillars reflected in everything we do, in and outside of the school. That makes CC! framework friendly and reachable."

Juli Sarmiento

Psychologist

The Columbus School
Colombia

"The most magical part of this program is the ease of implementation by the entire school staff. We are all able to use a simple shared language making the program seamless to use. It is wonderful to have a program where we can positively praise behavior based on a pillar of character, to show how students can lead by example. Since this is such an "easy" program to teach, I believe this is why it's so easy to then implement and use year after year."

Rachel Chunglo

Principal

Albia Judd Elementary School
Prescott, AZ

"The students at West Hertel Academy proudly recite and pledge to be Kids of Character daily and, over the past three years, have internalized those words and now feel a sense of responsibility and commitment to demonstrating the Six Pillars of Character through their words and actions."

LaFreya Wilson

Teacher

West Hertel Academy

Buffalo, NY

Ready to Get Started?

We’re here to help! Contact us today to
begin working on character and culture.

People impacted by our work.

The number of annual
CHARACTER COUNTS! Week
proclamations by the White House.

The year we were founded.

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From Our Store

Way To Go Journals

Way To Go Journals help students create strategies for academic success and develop character and social-emotional skills.

Journals provide students with thought-provoking questions on character and leadership. Educators can use the Journals as opportunities for student personal reflection, small-group discussions, or large-group conversations. Each Journal includes more than 160 reflection questions.

Welcome to CHARACTER COUNTS!