The news events of the past few years, with an overwhelming arc of meanness, disrespect and disregard for others, fractures my heart.
What has happened to common courtesy? Civility? Kindness and respect?
What are our children learning from this mean-spirited time?
How can we magnify kindness and respect in both children and adults?
In this series of articles, I’ll focus on how we as school leaders can create environments where civility plays out every day. Environments where kindness and respect are taught and used. Environments where children and adults work and live with grace and dignity.
Teaching civility, I feel, is integral to our work as school leaders.
Living with incivility, we each pay a huge price in terms of quality of life, health, relationships, job satisfaction and much more.
With this training on teaching civility, I will draw heavily from Christine Porath’s book, Mastering Civility: A manifesto for the workplace, as well as other sources.
As we teach civility, the grace and courtesy lessons we offer in our Montessori classroom find renewed importance and during this series I’ll offer lesson resources.
Part 1 Challenge: Who Do I Want To Be?
That is a key question to ask multiple times a day, not only to ourselves, but to those around us.
- Do you want to be a person who values others?
- Who helps others succeed?
- Who removes obstacles to success?
- Who creates a culture of kindness and respect?
- Who creates a place where people connect to their best selves?
I invite you to join me with this series of articles, along with my free workshop, to reignite the flame of civility.
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