The purpose of the Character Education program at Norris Elementary School is to develop a community of learners who become socially responsible and caring individuals. Character Education at Norris Elementary is a school-wide effort to create a caring community where character traits (word of the month) are modeled, taught, and continuously practiced in daily interactions. Teachers take advantage of opportunities presented in the curriculum to teach lessons about each of the character traits.

Character building is most effective when parents acknowledge
and seize opportunities to:

1)  Build your child's awareness of the moral importance of his or her choices.

2)  Increase your child's desire to do the right thing.

3)  Help your child strengthen his or her ability to think about the consequences of choices, consider alternative behaviors, and do the right thing.

4)  Model good character in everything you say and do.

5)  Be sure your verbal and nonverbal messages reinforce lessons about doing the right thing even when it is hard to do so. When you slip (and most of us do), act the way you want your children to behave when they act improperly. Be accountable, apologize sincerely, and work to do better.

"The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back."
Abigail Van Buren

"Character isn't inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains."
Helen Gahagan Douglas

"Character is higher than intellect."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Sow a thought and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap a character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny."
Samuel Smiles