Hi everyone. Welcome to Teaching Character And Creating Positive Classrooms. We're so excited that you joined us to talk about how we can weave character into the very DNA of our classrooms and schools, right alongside the absolutely critical academics that we teach. There are two main ideas for this course. One comes from James Baldwin and another from elephants. James Baldwin has this incredible quote, Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. And this is the exact reason that any character work hinges upon it being a shared journey between us and our students. This became clear to me early in my career. I was yelling. I'm not really proud of this. But I was yelling at a seventh grader to stop yelling at another kid. Let me say that again. I was yelling at a seventh grader to stop yelling at another kid. And as only middle school kids can do, in the moment, the seventh grader turns to me and says Mr. Levin, you do realize that you're yelling at me to stop yelling. Kids take this stuff seriously, they wanna know that the adults are working on the same thing that we're asking them to do. And in that moment, that young man and I, we shared a laugh, and then, more importantly, we shared a commitment to both yelling less. And, see, it's that shared journey upon which all of this work hinges. If we're asking kids to work hard, they've got to see us, as teachers, working hard. If we're asking them to turn in work on time, they've got to see us trying to turn back work on time. If we're asking them to show up at school every day, they've got to see us showing up every day. They want to know that it is a shared journey. That's why this is so important. So then the question is, how are we gonna do this. And that's where the elephants come in. Elephants learn largely through muscle memory. We do as well, often. To bring this home, I want us to think about when we shower. I want this course to live and breathe in all aspects of your life. For the next month, when you shower you're gonna be thinking about character, and you're gonna be thinking about muscle memory. And see, it tends to work like this. Some of us start showering above the neck, we wash our heads or our hair. Others of us are body washers, we start below the neck. Me? I'm a body washer. And here's what I'd like for you to do next time you shower. I'd like for you to switch. If you're a body washer, start above the neck. If you wash your head or hair first, start below the neck with your body. And a funny things gonna happen. You're gonna get confused. You're gonna say, did I wash this part? Did I not wash this part? And most likely you'll start all over. And that's why there's the old expression we teach the way we are taught, and we parent the way we were raised. And if we wanna change the way we teach, we wanna change the way we parent, it's gonna take conscious effort to unlearn and build new muscle memory, and that's what we're gonna do together.
