WestLinn-WilsonvilleSchool District

  • Willamette Primary (grades k-5)
  • Stafford Primary (grades k-5)
  • Bolton/Rosemont Middle School (grades 6-8)
  • WestLinnHigh School (grades 9-12)

Character Education in West Linn-Wilsonville rests on eight years of development work with the community. The project began with a community Blue Ribbon Panel, with members of the community at large, and the school board. All twelve schools’ site councils contributed to the Character Education program development in West Linn-Wilsonville. As the project approaches a higher level of maturity with Character Education, the manifestation of activity is all schools represented in the stated goals, instructional initiatives and in the public calls for participation to help schools become a Community of Character. Specific actions supported by the grant in the past five year make it clear that Character Education has been raised to an equal level of importance with academic achievement. In the West Linn-Wilsonville School District Academic Achievement and Character Education serve as the centerpiece of school improvement and neither is sufficient or fully achieved without the other.

A. Description of the character education program as it now exists.

Each of the component projects in the five-year grant contributes to the development of a Community of Character. Each project provides a unique entry point into a school and community through a process that is at the heart of that school’s current questions and dilemmas. In each of these component projects West Linn-Wilsonville supports adult learning with clear links to the changes expected to effect student learning.

The development of community and good schools is hard work. To cause change, a process must be used that makes sense to the people in their context, with their issues, hopes, and unique talents. Schools have always been woefully unsuccessful at importing the answers of one community to another. The initiatives here build on the learning of people in other places but they honor the need for these schools to reinvent the wheel for each school and this school district. It is the most likely way for powerful systemic change to be achieved. In each of these component projects a dedicated community of learners will join in inquiry and action to learn the way forward toward becoming a Community of Character. Each component project carries a piece of the whole.

The program has these goals and component projects:

Developing a Community of Character

  • To increase the expectation for high standards for academic achievement
  • To increase the expectation for high standards for personal character
  • To increase the expectation for high standards for community character

Component Projects

1) Caught In Character

This project led to the development of a major media piece, Character Matters, which is used with children and adults to expand understanding of character values in schools. A strong priority in this grant, the Caught in Character Project, has a rich life in each school. In year one of the grant, the Whole Child Stewardship Team launched planning and preparation for a major media piece. After previews at each school in staff and parent group meetings, the project was expanded to other groups. The video added new life to a series of story writing, story-telling events with teachers, children and other community adults.

Caught in Character is a set of stories drawn from personal narrative. The stories invite examination of the character traits honest, integrity, respect, and responsibility. The video piece is used in classrooms, with parent groups, and with community groups, Chambers of Commerce, Rotary Clubs, and Lions to engage in interactive discussions about the roles and responsibilities of a community member. This initiative has significantly advanced the Community of Character agenda in the schools and community.

Over 400 copies of the video have been made and have been shared at meetings throughout Oregon. It has been presented at the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators and Oregon School Board Association events, and a West Linn-Wilsonville’s Celebration of Collaborative Inquiry. Many school districts have already asked for and have been sent copies of the video. The video is also used in classes taught at area universities.

The second media piece will be launched after completion of the grant, and will help this community with the journey to become a Community of Character. This second video helps to identify the dilemmas that come in real life as people work with real problems where conflicting values are present. This video is getting to the heart of living with a set of values that may in some cases present themselves as two competing goods.

2) In Pursuit of Possibilities

The district partnership with Quest International and The Serdna Foundation was active in Years 2 and 3 has been completed. In Pursuit of Possibilities is a growing and changing development project now including all areas of the Comprehensive Character Education Program with particular emphasis on the involvement of parents. The Character Curriculum Map Framework and the professional development program for schools in West Linn-Wilsonville continued to contribute to this development in the program. The adoption of Health and Science programs includes a section on Character Education in the Science Program and Character Education in the Health Program. The committee discussions that led to this inclusive view helped advance the process with teachers K-12. (See attached Curriculum Mapping Framework. See attached introduction to Science and Health documents.)

3) The Middle School Study – From Plan to Action

The Year 1 activities that led to the opening of a new middle school, Rosemont Ridge, expanded to a public engagement process in stage two—a Middle School Study. The Middle School Study was a community event in December 1999 engaging parents, children, teachers and community members. The Summit was guided by a steering committee looking at the research and questions from year one. The middle school study provided an opportunity to examine all elements of school development through the lens of the Comprehensive Character Education Program model.

The Middle School Study produced two important and difficult questions:

Question #1: How do the assessment, instruction, and grading practices reflect Respect and Responsibility for the learners?

Question #2: How will middle school schedules and staff organize to teach the whole child with full access to a broad program in all disciplines?

The work builds on a middle school study day on assessment in October 2001. All Middle level teachers were assembled for a full day workshop on the findings and questions from the middle school summits. The workshop task force teams will work at each school to understand better middle school practices that reflect the values of respect for children as people and learners.

In Year 4, a task force team gave further study to implementation projects in assessment, grading, organization, and instruction. In 2002, the task force integrated with the staff at the middle schools to implement best practices in assessment and reporting and prepare for full program offerings.

A new report card for middle school was in place in Fall 2002. This represented a strong effort to respond to the middle school study. The major change in this reporting is the addition of evidence of effort being separated out from the academic grade. This report strengthened the message that character counts in WestLinn-WilsonvilleSchool District.

4) Willamette – Compassion and Gratitude.

During the course of the grant, Willamette’s Playground for Hearts was funded by the parents group. Following the work begun in the spring of 1998, the school continued a school culture development process to increase student achievement and standards of character. All elements of the Comprehensive Character Education Program model are incorporated into the project.

In Year 5, Willamette developed the school culture and instructional program to increase the quality of community, the evidence of character, and improved student learning. Book study groups with parents, a school-wide conflict problem-solving strategy, and staff development for the use of literature to launch character study are some of the activities that were part of the Willamette project.

The Empty Bowl Project was an extraordinary example of how character education became infused in the curriculum, incorporated throughout the school, and impacted the community. The project combined study of world hunger, a student art project, and a fund-raising project to support food programs for needy people here and abroad.

This extensive project was a world-class example of what a school can do when academic excellence and character education are woven together to create an exemplary school.

5) WestLinnHigh School – Opening the New School in the New Millennium

WestLinnHigh School took a proud history forward to create a bright dynamic future. Year 3 activities launched a school summit and the work continued from there. In this process each area of the Comprehensive Character Education Program model was examined and developed.

Character Education at WestLinnHigh School is thriving. In Year 3, several new challenges greeted a new principal. The combination of conditions—new principal, new building, mid-year move—called out the energy and good will of the community, staff, and students. The grant support was essential to keep the work moving forward.

A study of ninth grade experience and the senior project continued, and included a strong service component. In the spring, the faculty listened to a panel of students describe their experience as they entered the school. This deep listening led to significant learning about how children experience school. The faculty was led to examine the way children are treated, the way children treat one another and the way classroom learning contributes to a community of character, or not. Listening to students has become a powerful catalyst for learning at WestLinnHigh School. Staff is becoming aware that the way they organize for instruction is important. The way children experience adults in the school has everything to do with the way students feel respected as people and as learners, and in the way they act. One student said wistfully, “Sometimes I think kids have more integrity than adults.”

6) Stafford – Expanding CARE to include Bolton and Boones Ferry

The Stafford development project has been one of the liveliest. Working from a small but powerful school initiative, this school expanded the work of the CARE team to improve the standards of academic achievement and character for all children. This project builds on a school summit that identified student leadership and community service learning as priorities.

Stafford has a spectacular story to tell. Stafford is leading the district to new questions of how character education can become embedded in the culture of the school, the parent group, and in each classroom. Two new schools, Bolton and Boones Ferry are developing strong cultures. Each of the new schools had an opportunity to launch a new culture with the boost that newness gives. Bolton is a small gem-like community with character and learning at the heart. Boones Ferry had a rocky first year, but with particular attention, strategic activities funded by the dissemination grant extension, and new leadership, Boones Ferry is ready to blossom.

7) Teaching and Learning—Curriculum and Instruction

This initiative took the design work from Year 1 forward to implementation in the following years. The design team worked on staff development for implementation with school counselors, teachers, parents, students, community resource officers, and other community resources. The implementation of the framework for Social Emotional Learning is tying together the health and safety, character development, guidance, leadership, safe and drug free schools and service learning components of the K-5 program. Special emphasis in Year 5 has been the Science and Health and Physical Education integration.

Work will continue to implement the framework. In Year 4, the instructional power of the Character Education –Social Emotional Learning curriculum expanded. Primary and middle schools are working with Second Step program materials. Middle and high schools are working with the Relational Aggression program developers to create programs for both boys and girls. These resources are tied together under the West Linn-Wilsonville Curriculum Framework.

Contribution of components projects to comprehensive program

Component projects contribute to a comprehensive Character Education Program.

Contribution of component projects to product development

Component projects contribute to the development of products for the Character Education Partnership Grant.

Integration of component projects

Each of the component projects provides a unique and powerful point of entry into the school cultures. Each school has a rich history, a tradition that includes abundant success and consistent effort to improve. The premise of Developing a Community of Character is that successful initiatives begin by honoring the past and build on the promise for the future. The unique place of each school in time, the context of schooling in Oregon moving into the new millennium, and national and international perspectives, the vision and values of the people of West Linn-Wilsonville, when understood and honored will contribute to the success of school development.

Schools, even new schools, do not start as a blank slate. Schools are dynamic systems, more like rushing mountain streams than the rocks that form the stream banks. Negotiating deep systemic change in schools is more like repairing the Boeing 747 at 30,000 feet than tinkering in the workshop. Schooling is an intensely human enterprise where real change happens as people learn their way forward. Developing a Community of Character is designed to be such an enterprise. Developing a Community of Character holds for West Linn-Wilsonville, a record of success and the promise of great things.

B. Description of how and why the character education program evolved over the five- year grant.

West Linn-Wilsonville has gone beyond the expectations for this grant. When West-Linn-Wilsonville committed to this grant over a five-year period, the Oregon grant director made it clear that a three-school K-12 program model would be a great achievement. It is now clear that there are 12 schools, an entire school district K-12 and community program model to offer at the end of the grant project.

Continued sponsorship of Character Education by the School Board and Superintendent have been essential to progress. The work the district had done prior to the beginning of the grant was important. The district had already gone down a few dead end paths with program design. Programs that were too tight or were too loose had already been tried. At one point, the district thought that they might simply identify a curriculum for Character Education and implement it. A few schools took the simple path of implementing programs like Quest Skills for Life, No Put Downs, Stick-up For Yourself, Hands are Not For Hurting. In each case they found that scripted programs must be used carefully, so as not to trivialize the issues or create simplistic answers to the complex moral dilemmas faced by real children in the real world. Each of these contributed to awareness but most of these programs have not proven very effective after the initial enthusiasm waned.

At another point in the development, the district thought schools could find their own path without too much direction. Both of these approaches proved wrong. What has worked is rather more sophisticated. The model is strongly supported with district goal setting through the District Study Model and School Development Planning. The model relies on significant professional leadership development with a focus on ethical facilitative leadership to create school cultures and classrooms where character and learning are valued, modeled, and learned and practiced through real daily actions.

C. What changes have been observed in the overall school culture as a result of your character education program?

The school culture has been strengthened year by year through multiple authentic conversations and earnest inquiries relative to the stated goals for Developing a Community of Character. It is difficult to attribute effects to any one variable in a system as complex as the WestLinn-WilsonvilleSchool District. There are twelve schools, two more than when the grant began. The district encompasses two distinct cities, and a large unincorporated area. It has the same district leadership but many of the schools have new principals, teachers, and families. Never-the-less, this is a great deal of agreement among all stakeholders that the Character Education initiative, implemented as is has been in a very systemic fashion, is an essential and powerful variable in the success of schools. A survey and anecdotal data reveals these observations: