9001 Winchester Avenue, Margate City, New Jersey 08402
Phone 609-822-2391 Fax 609-822-1986

CHARACTER EDUCATION COUNTS AT UNION AVENUE SCHOOL

JUST AS IMPORTANT AS READING, WRITING, AND ARITHMETIC IS HOW WE TREAT EACH OTHER AS PEOPLE. Social Skills is our character education training program that has been a part of our school over 8 years. Social Skills involves the introduction of learned behaviors that enable a person to interact in ways that are beneficial to one's self and others. Teachers introduce a new skill each week. Skills include listening, asking for help, saying thank you, asking a question, beginning a question, apologizing, dealing with anger, accepting consequences, and over 50 others that you can find in your 1st and 2nd graders' planners. The skills are divided into five groups: Classroom Survival, Friendship-Making, Dealing with Feelings, Alternatives to Aggression, and Dealing with Stress. Our 2nd graders have begun a program that integrates writing and character education. This daily writing exercise covers themes including HONESTY, HONOR, RESPECT, ACCOUNTABILITY, EXCELLENCE, SELF-CONTROL, FAIRNESS, CARING, and CIVILITY. Our character education program permeates every aspect of school life in our K-2 building.

School rules and routines, which are an important resource for our skills, are posted everywhere. Social Skills are reinforced in lunch, assembly, recess, and in the classroom. Many "incidents" involving scenarios that are the same as those covered in class are handled with the students' being asked to use their social skills in order to solve a problem.

The use of social skills is rewarded in our school's "Caught Being Good" program. When the teacher sees a child demonstrating the proper execution of a skill in a real life situation, the child is rewarded - he or she is "caught being good." The child's name goes on a slip of paper indicating the date and the skill mastered. The child goes to the main office and puts the paper into a jar. At the end of the month, a special social skills assembly is conducted in which all of the children in the jar are recognized in front of the entire student body. They then pose for a group picture with the principal. One copy of the picture is sent home while another is posted in the main lobby. Then, five students are chosen at random from the jar for a special pizza lunch with the principal the next day. The assembly also features two classes demonstrating a role-play that they had practiced just for the occasion.