Character Matters: How to Help Our Children Develop Good Judgment, Integrity, and Other Essential Virtues

Character Matters: How to Help Our Children Develop Good Judgment, Integrity, and Other Essential Virtues Review

Don't Let Our Kids Flunk Life

The novelist Walker Percy once observed, "Some people get all As but flunk life." Succeeding in life takes character. In Character Matters, award-winning psychologist-educator Thomas Lickona offers more than 100 practical strategies that parents and schools have used to help kids build strong personal character as the foundation for a purposeful, productive, and fulfilling life.

Lickona shows how irresponsible and destructive behavior can invariably be traced to the absence of good character and its 10 essential qualities: wisdom, justice, fortitude, self-control, love, a positive attitude, hard work, integrity, gratitude, and humility. He lays out a blueprint for building these core virtues through a partnership shared by families, schools, and communities. Chapters include:

• 14 strategies that help kids succeed academically while building character
• More than a dozen character-building discipline strategies
• 20 ways to prevent peer cruelty and promote kindness
• 10 ways to talk to teens about sex, love, and character

The culmination of a lifetime's work in character education, this landmark book gives us the tools we need to raise respectful and responsible children, create safe and effective schools, and build the caring and decent society in which we all want to live.

Authors - How to Develop a Character: Quick and Easy Tips for Writing Credible Characters

Authors - How to Develop a Character: Quick and Easy Tips for Writing Credible Characters Review

Authors – How to Develop a Character:
Quick and Easy Tips for Writing Credible Characters

7,000 words

You may have a compelling story and an engaging style, but if your characters do not resonate with your reader or viewer, be it a novel or a screenplay, your project will not come alive and be successful.

You can spends years taking courses, going to workshops, completing assignments and exercises and studying what has been written by professional writers, and that is all good, but there are times when what you need to get yourself in gear, in the flow, or in the zone as athletes call it, is a simple shift in perspective.

This booklet may be small – 7,000 words (about 35-48 Kindle pages) – but it can be a valuable aid in helping you bring your characters to life. After the book has been read or the movie viewed, what your reader or audience will take away with them is often the rapport, the care and concern, and even a feeling of bonding with your characters. They may not recall all the carefully constructed twists and turns in the plot but human beings are innately interested in other people and that is typically where their attachment will be. And anything that can help you create memorable characters is a tool worth having.

So whether you are working on a novel, a screenplay, short stories, or making your first attempt at fiction writing, try some of these quick and easy tips for writing credible characters.

Enjoy your writing!

The Ascent of a Leader: How Ordinary Relationships Develop Extraordinary Character and Influence

The Ascent of a Leader: How Ordinary Relationships Develop Extraordinary Character and Influence Review

A Leadership Network Publication



Become the leader people are proud to follow by opening yourself to the influences that develop character: Anduring relationships with friAnds, family, and God.Solidly based on Christian values, this practical, visionary, and hope-filled book guides readers through a step-by-step process for developing both personal character and the network of important relationships that enable character to win out, even in the face of setbacks, adversity, and temptations to take short cuts. Leadership is about character, the authors assert, and character weaves values like integrity, honesty, and selfless service into the fabric of our lives, organizations, and cultures.

The Ascent of a Leader is written for ordinary people-mothers, husbands, bosses, secretaries, pastors, teachers, and students-who want to develop extraordinary character, find and follow God's plan for their lives, and lead others where they need to go. We all have innate leadership potential. To maximize it, we must do much more than develop performance-based skills, the authors assert. We must consciously choose who and what we allow to influence us, find and develop our humility, and build Anduring relationships with colleagues, family, friAnds, and God. They offer engaging real-life examples to show how we can grow into our true potential as leaders and inspire us to "make a difference in the 21st century-in our families, our communities, our companies, our government, and even our world."



With a foreword by Ken Blanchard.