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Character Education
Character Education Seminar in Newburgh, New York
Written by UPF Office of Character Education
Saturday, May 31, 2008
More than a dozen people gathered in a beautiful mosque, Masjid Al-Ikhlas, in Newburgh, New York on May 31 for a one-day character education seminar. In spite of the religious character of the venue, participants were inspired to see how truly universal character education is. Attendees from Christian, Muslim, and other religious backgrounds including those from a more spiritual based perspective were completely comfortable sharing and studying the character education curriculum, Discovering the Real Me, together. The “virtues-oriented” curriculum and style of teaching helped foster a dialogue that could be the basis for discussions of peace and other issues, emphasizing as it does human commonality rather than human differences.
Mrs. Gale Alves of Binghamton, New York invited citizens of Newburgh and the surrounding areas to attend the seminar. Sally Sayre, representing the Character Education Initiative of UPF (Universal Peace Federation), conducted the training. Two participants, Matt Taft and Crescentia Hinkle, were in training to conduct character education classes in the Caribbean this summer.
The day began with introductions and a “get to know you” session over coffee and pastries. We then moved right into Mrs. Sayre’s introduction of the UPF Character Education Initiative. We viewed a video filmed in April at a longer training workshop held in Pennsylvania. The film does an excellent job of introducing the program, the importance of character education, and what sets the UPF curriculum apart from others—primarily through its focus on the three life goals and the recognition of the family as being the primary school of love and virtues while understanding that the school and larger community play key roles.
We took twenty minutes to play a “warm-up” exercise and then pulled out a lesson from Book 7 for 11 to 12 year old students entitled “Commitment and Loyalty.” We read the story and then discussed how it could be used and adapted for use in a variety of situations. Some of the participants had to leave early, so we tailored the rest of the seminar to the specific interests of the remaining participants. Sister Sana Shabazz, for example, works in a prison setting with incarcerated women, and she also works with younger teens. She spent time looking at more of the warm-up exercises and thinking about ways to engage the women with the lessons in Book 12.
Dian Larkin and Suma Senman-Lane teach parenting classes and were very inspired to see the relevance of Discovering the Real Me to what they are doing. Diane and Suma work together and have themselves begun to write a curriculum for their parenting course.
All in all, the universality and versatility of character education—and its ability to speak to people in all different situations—was reaffirmed as a wide diversity of participants found themselves equally inspired by the discussions of virtues and the usefulness of incorporating character education into their various endeavors.
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