[BLANK_AUDIO] So how should educators use the character growth card? The first step is having each student receive and complete, a self-reflection for each of their own character strengths and behaviors. They each reflect, and score themselves. The second step is that each of their teachers does the same. Step three is to have one person gather, organize, and review the ratings. The numbers serve as a catalyst to talk about character strengths and behaviors and growth with students and parents. They're not meant to evaluate, diagnose, or compare kids. Step four is actually having that meaningful dialogue. In middle school, I'd recommend using the character growth card every quarter. If I was a self-contained elementary teacher, I might use it even more frequently. It's important that it be a natural part of the school process so it doesn't feel like a gotcha or a response to a crisis. When I talk about the character growth card, a question that often comes up is, why rate the strengths? Why even assign numeric values to something like self control? It's a fair question, so I wanted to answer it here. Our view is that those conversations are enhanced and actually made possible through the use of specific ratings around character. Whether you use happy faces red, yellow, green colors or numeric values. One of the biggest components of getting good at anything or developing a new skill is real time feedback. The numbers facilitate a conversation about growth over time and allows students to compare their self assessment with that of their teachers. It's important to frame that conversation, in a way that helps students get, and stay, in a growth mindset. Let's close, with some sound advice, from Angela Duckworth, on the importance, of meaningful dialog. What do you see as the value of the character growth card? >> So the character growth card I think is, is built on the assumption that feedback is useful. If we're going to give kids feedback on how they're doing in math class, and how they're doing, on their writing How they're doing in social studies. Well, maybe they could grow from feedback on their social intelligence, their expressions of gratitude, their self control, their grit, etcetera. The idea, the character growth card, is for teachers and, and, and students to say, alright over the last week, over the last quarter, you know. How have I been doing on these behaviors that, that correspond to, you know, grit, self-control, gratitude, etcetera. In a way, I think we're trying to innovate the whole darn report card, because I don't think, traditional report cards are very good at getting kids to think about change and growth and goal-setting. >> What have you found that the behaviors associated with the character growth card, predict? There's a bucket of behaviors that correspond to grit, self control and optimism, that are really all about the student regulating them self in order to accomplish their own goals and objectives. So you can call it self management, sometimes people call it achievement character and that group of behaviors predicts over one year later things like GPA, standardized test scores etcetera we, we knew that from separate research but we now directly have that evidence from the character growth card. The second cluster of behaviors really correspond to not how the child is regulating themself for their own goals, but how the child is managing themself with respect to being with other people, right. So harmony with others. And this could be called social character, sometimes people call it moral character. It includes gratitude. In social intelligence and also self control for interpersonal interactions like controlling your temper. And those, character skills are also predictive of academic performance, but they're even more predictive we think and this is what we have to test this year. Potentially of social relationships, like whether people will name you for example, as somebody they like to be with. Now that's a hypothesis that we're testing going forward, but we know for sure it does predict things like your grades and so forth, as well. In the last group of character skill behaviors would be things like, curiosity and zest, really being engaged in the work of the school, in being curious in, you know, in wanting to learn more about things and that category of Of character skills tends to predict things of interestingly of physical health over one year later and as I mentioned before we're collecting new data and one things that we would hope is that it would predict kids voluntarily learning things outside of class. You know wanting to go to Wikipedia or to learn things through you know Ted talks or Youtube or what have you. So we really do think actually these three emerging categories, how you are managing yourself towards your own goals, how you are managing yourself with respect to living harmoniously with other people and then how, the life of the mind, right, judgment and thinking, imagination. Those to me seem to be useful ways of thinking about character and we'll have more data in a year. But even the preliminary evidence suggests that, you know, they all predict some aspect of a life well lived. >> So what advice do you have, and what words of caution might you have? >> All the measures that we would produce, you know, like the character growth card or any of the measures that are on my site. I, I encourage people to look at, to use if they're helpful, but I do want to add some cautions, alright? For, for one thing we're still developing these measures, and we don't know for sure how sensitive, for example, they will be to growth in a child's competence over time, right. So if for example, if a teacher fails to see any measurable difference in character based on this measure. They should not leap to the conclusion that well, then for sure we know that character skills have not changed. Right, so we're working on, on making them sensitive to change over time, but that has not been established yet. One thing I think that influences how anybody would rate anyone else on these behaviors is the standards that they hold. And so, for example, if one of the things, as a teacher is that you are trying to teach kids is to have really high standards for themselves. Well you might actually find a, an effect where the kids self reported: I am a hard worker, goes down over the year instead of up, because you have raised their expectations for what it even means to be a hard worker. And we actually do have evidence of that. That's why I think maybe the most useful thing to say about these these measures, the character growth card in particular. Is that it can be used as a formative assessment tool. It can be used as a conversation starter. As a tool for a kid's self knowledge, and some feedback that, that with conversation not just giving the kid the piece of paper but having a talk with them about why it is the teachers rate them and different ways. That, that to me seems like yeah, you could do that today, but for these other uses, I would not endorse them, and I would say, you know we'll get back to you, we're working on it. In a couple years we might have answers to those other questions.
