Building a Champion Character: How Program Developed

        I developed this Character Education program as a fellow counselor. I was teaching large group
        guidance within the classroom. My school was beginning a Character Education program using
        CHAMPS (by Randy Sprick et al) as the classroom management tool. I wanted to provide lessons
        in social skills and values development to support the classroom management piece. Yet, we
        couldn’t find anything that quite fit the requirements for my school plan, so I created Building a
        Champion Character. This program allows students to have lessons of at least thirty minutes per
        week and, more importantly, it is a program that either the counselor or the teachers can present.
        The program requires little preparation time because each lesson is already written out in a user
        friendly manner. The teachers in all the schools using the program have been very receptive.
        This is important, because we all know how time in the classrooms is difficult to schedule in our
         day.

        The program first began as I was attending the Fall 2000 Kentucky Counselors’ Association
        Conference. I was talking to one of the presenters and telling her what I was doing in the
        classrooms. She suggested that I formally write up the curriculum and present it at the
        Kentucky School Counselors’ Conference in the Spring. So, I polished it up and “took it on the
        road”. In the Spring of 2001, I presented this Character Education program at the KSCA
        Conference. I was quite surprised when the door was closed to the breakout session and the
        room, which had a capacity of fifty, was standing room only with approximately 75 people.
        Some sat cross-legged on the floor to hear more about Character Education. I was even more
        surprised at the request, from the attendees, for a copy of the program. I was encouraged
        from the note-taking attendees on the floor and the requests for copies of the program to
        actually publish the program in book form. Since then, I have presented this program in
        several different forums and have only heard great feedback from the many counselors and schools
        that are using the program.

        As you plan your developmental counseling program for the upcoming year, I would ask that you
        review this Character Education Plan.

        Happy counseling,

       Susan R. Rose, Ph.D.

Building a Champion Character