Character Ed & Writing Children’s Books

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So, I’m a Guidance Counselor and a writer. I have taken my passion, which is helping kids be healthy and whole through character education, and re-purposed it in my writing. They say write what you know and I’ve done just that. I write children’s books with positive messages creatively embedded in magical adventures to help get my point across. But, some people have asked me what exactly is character education?

Character education can be straight-forward such as saying, “Today, children, we’re going to learn how to be polite to one another by learning three simple phrases. Please, thank you, and I’m sorry.” But, oftentimes, we are teaching character education all the time in subtle ways by how we act and respond in everyday situations. Parents know this very well. For instance, they may react very badly to a situation such as maybe saying a cuss word. And then, lo and behold, the child repeats it in front of someone that the parent really wishes wasn’t hearing what was coming out of their child’s mouth, say a minister of their faith or their boss. It’s funny how the things we really don’t want to teach our kids are exactly the things they pick up. I guess that’s human nature.

So, we try to form good habits as parents and teachers and yes, even Guidance Counselors so whenever children are watching us, they will pick up on those habits instead. We use polite language, we are respectful of children—their personal space and their thoughts and ideas. It’s a beautiful thing when you can get through the day and you’ve been able to practice what you want the children to emulate.

Character education has 6 main values—respect, trustworthiness, responsibility, caring, fairness, citizenship. These values are basically the “rules” that make up ethics. When children practice these values (and adults too, for that matter) we get along better as a society; we are happier people; we work together as a team and can produce far better results than if we were working alone.

Character education matters now, more than ever. I don’t just write for the fun of it (although it is fun to write), I write to get a message across to children and to help “teach” them something of value. I hope parents and teachers can see the positive messages in my books and will feel good about reading them to their children or encouraging their children or students to read one of my books on their own.

As always my books are available on Amazon