S8 E2: Character Development w/Dr. Scott Seider & Dr. Shelby Clark
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https://hep.gse.harvard.edu/9798895570302/character-compass-second-edition/
https://www.amazon.com/Character-Compass-Second-Directions-Building/dp/B0DZMPSQJK
Scott Seider, Ed.D. is an applied developmental psychologist whose research focuses on how parents and educators can support young peopleβs identity development and civic development. In one stream of research, Dr. Seider investigates how parents leading mixed race, mixed heritage, and mixed faith families engage their children in cultural and religious socialization. In a second stream of research, Dr. Seider explores how educators can support their studentsβ development of the civic skills, character strengths, and critical consciousness necessary to recognize, analyze, and challenge injustice. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles and books including Educating for Justice (2025), Schooling for Critical Consciousness (2020), and Character Compass (2012/2026). At Boston College, Dr. Seider teaches undergraduate and graduate courses focused on adolescent development, transformative teaching and learning, qualitative research methods, and social oppression and transformation. He previously worked as an English teacher in the Boston Public Schools and as a teacher educator at Boston University. Dr. Seider also serves on advisory boards for a number of youth-serving organizations including the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, EL Education, and the Journal of Adolescent Research.
Shelby Clark, Ph.D. (she/her) a Principal Investigator at Project Zero and a Project Director on The Good Project. She currently co-leads the "Implementation of The Good Project Lesson Plans" study investigating how engaging in a community of practice impacts teachers' implementation of The Good Project's lesson plans and the lesson plans' impact on students' character growth and ability to do "good work." She previously co-led the Investigating Impacts of Educational Experience project, a longitudinal study exploring the educational impact of mission-based international schools (visit edimpactstudy.com). Shelbyβs work focuses on the development of intellectual, moral, and civic character strengths in adolescents and young adults, with a focus on strengths such as curiosity, open-mindedness, and social responsibility. She received her Ph.D. in applied human development from Boston University, an M.A. from the George Washington University in school counseling, and a B.A. in history and music from Johns Hopkins University. Shelby formerly worked as a school counselor in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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There are many ways to define character. In their book, Character Compass, they define it as the qualities that motivate and enable people to active in a way that benefits themselves and others. Different individuals and organizations focus on different parts of that - e.g., motivation, skills, building, self-thriving, other-thriving.
Alexis shares how sometimes the most difficult terms to describe often encompass so much.
It can also be talked about as βthe head, the heart, and the handβ.
Character can be parsed into 4 elements: the moral, performance, civic, and intellectual. Depending on the goal of the individual, family, or organization , different elements could be emphasized.
A first step to start the conversation around character development could be to identify what the collective cares about as their values. It helps to start with what you want the focus to be on rather than thinking you have to focus fully on all different character strengths. A value sort is used in the Good Project to help explore values in the school. The terminology might differ, as well, as a way to integrate these ideas in a particular context that will be received. Knowing your population is important before starting to employ a program or mission. The book Character Compass is a guide for how to do this.
Some values show up more vividly and robustly in a school depending on what is prioritized even if other values are still important.
Alexis shares that similar to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), sometimes we get closer or further away from living out and aligning with our values and we can remind ourselves what is important to us in life.
Gerald shares how sometimes individuals may get in the habit of only emphasizing a particular value, especially in the age of algorithms that pull for that, at the expense of expanding upon other values that could be equally important.
It can be unrealistic to βdo everythingβ in terms of having a large number of values that are being worked on in an intentional way. Rather, having a smaller number of values that reflect βwhat you want to beβ is more realistic and tangible. Alexis shares how individuals she works with tend to have so many different values that they find important and feel spread too thin to do it all. Prioritizing energy, time, and focus is so important. Giving time to reflect on oneself and oneβs system is important to begin this process.
There are different schools of thought as to how to develop moral character such as modeling from others; focusing on habit formation; positively reinforcing the moral behavior; giving opportunities to practice character behaviors; teaching moral character intellectually and through discussion. In truth, it is likely a combination of all of these approaches to develop moral character. Gerald explains how this is very similar to an integrative approach to psychotherapy where you can help individuals in therapy through not just one approach. Similarly, the bullying research suggests thereβs likely not one way to prevent or address bullying in a school and that programs that are most successful are a whole-school integrated approach.
It is not necessarily easy to develop moral character. It takes time. It needs to be generalized across situations.
There may be some small percentage of people who are born on the edge of being more extreme in terms of certain traits, but mostly people are not on the extremes and the development of traits comes from all of the influences.
As Dr. Maryanne Wolf shared on our previous episode about the science of reading, perspective-taking and empathy comes from deep reading. That is even another way of developing character traits.
Dr. Seider shares how kids can intellectual demonstrate empathy but they also need to actualize empathy in their real-time interactions in an integrated way.
Dr. Clarkβs research has focused on the use of role-models in the childβs life (including those they see in the media) to look to for inspiration for character development. The kids may express certain character traits in their role-model which may or may not be valued in their everyday life.
Identity seems so important since what is βcoolβ or rewarded by others may not be reflecting character traits that are important or healthy for the individual. It can be powerful when young people can see role-models who expand their character traits.
Dr. Clarkβs research shows that children tend to describe their parents as their top role-models, followed by celebrities, teachers, etc.
It can help for young people to see the behind the scenes process of what adult role-models do to be βsuccessfulβ or to do positive things in their life.
Young people areβ¦ young. They are still developing and scared and so forth. It takes time to mature and change and evolve. Gerald and Alexis tend to hear patients as they get older acknowledge, βYeah, what I was told back then had truth to it, now I can really appreciate it.β
Change can be hard and take a lot of patience.
Dr. Seider talks about there being a leap of faith involved to believe that all the efforts to develop character can lead to character development in the long-run. However, it is always possible that the efforts do not show immediate outcomes. The second edition of their book, they tracked down young people who have now grown up 1.5 decades later to reflect on their character development from their high school that focused on moral and intellectual character. It was found that the experience did indeed have a powerful influence on who they are today, even if the outcome of the influences are felt more deeply later in life.
Parents can ask curious reflective questions like, βWhat is the thing you remember?β βWhat do you wish you could experience again?β βWhat part are you most proud of?β And then connect it back to what they actually value and care about.
Institutions can be in continual process of figuring out how to integrate ethical training from the past to meet the current events of the times. Dr. Seider and Dr. Clark shares a story of a school (Classical Academy) that taught moral ethics in a classical way, but moved away from that content during the social justice movements of 2020 due to feeling like the older philosophers were considered outdated and not meeting the moment at the time. However, a year or two ago, a new leader entered and spoke to the alumni of the school to ask what was most important about their curriculum⦠The alumni reportedly continuously described how their classical moral ethical education (from old philosophers) was actually one of the most important parts of their education. And so, the school returned to the classical ethics approach that the students found were fundamental and important, while also finding ways to integrate content to the current events and context of the present state of societal affairs.
Dr. Seider recommends choosing a small number of character traits/strengths/core values that you as a leader and the community can spend time on and prioritize. Then, take a both-and approach to teaching those values and strengths. Have a specific part of the school day (e.g., Advisory, weekly meeting, or a particular course) where you can spend time teaching on what those core values/character traits are and recognize them when they are happening. Then, also encourage teachers to seek out and create opportunities for students to acknowledge these core values and character traits when they occur within the curriculum and/or within student behaviors. Schools can have language for describing when positive things happen and also for when upsetting things happen. Similar to therapy providing the language to describe experiences.
Intellectual humility is something to be modeled and accepted as a norm in the classroom as a way to improve having difficult conversations. Curiosity is a character strength to practice leading up to having difficult conversations.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) suggests there can be a little bit of wisdom to each side of an argument rather than arguing who is right or wrong. There can be a percentage of validity and accuracy (rather than all-or-nothing and black-and-white) to what someone is saying on both sides of an argument; perhaps coming from a different perspective or perhaps coming from oneβs own psychology and history contributing to the way a person is thinking differently than someone else.
Young people are still developing and may not have had a full range of experiences to have a wider perspective on life.
Mistake-making is a significant part of learning. Young people may feel less free to make mistakes than would be ideal within a perfectionistic culture and environment. Dr. Clark focuses research on taking intellectual risks. It is important to foster a sense of safety and uncertainty being okay and acceptable and tolerable. Even hearing student voices and using assessments to measure mistake making rather than just getting correct answers, to help students learn from the process of learning.
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Alexis Reid 00:09
welcome back to the Reid Connect-ED podcast, co hosted by myself educational therapist Alexis Reid and my brother, licensed psychologist Gerald Reid. We're providing you with an expert and nuanced discussion on topics relevant to mental health, education and sport and performance psychology,
Gerald Reid 00:26
today's topic is about character development. And no, we're not talking about a book or a movie character. We're talking about character in the sense of the qualities or traits that make up an individual. But what does it really mean to have character? We're going to get into the depths of understanding what this idea of character is. We're going to talk about character development, the ways that schools and institutions and people in young people's lives can really facilitate this idea of character traits and character development.
Alexis Reid 00:55
So today, we're joined by doctors Scott sider and Shelby Clark. Scott sider is an applied developmental psychologist whose research focuses on how parents and educators can support young people's identity development and civic development in one stream of research. Dr cider investigates how parents leading mixed race, mixed heritage and mixed faith families engage their children in cultural and religious socialization. In a second stream of research, Dr cider explores how educators can support their students' development of civic skills, character strengths and critical consciousness necessary to recognize, analyze and challenge injustice. He's the author and co author of numerous articles and books, including educating for justice from 2025 schooling for critical consciousness, published in 2020 and character compass published both in 2012 and the new issue in 2026 at Boston College, my alma mater, Dr cider, teaches undergraduate and graduate courses focused on adolescent development, transformative teaching and learning, qualitative research methods, one of my favorite classes, and social oppression and transformation. He previously worked as an English teacher in the Boston Public Schools and as a teacher educator at Boston University. Dr cider also serves on advisory boards for a number of youth serving organizations, including the Center for parent and teen communication, el education and the Journal of Adolescent research.
Gerald Reid 02:32
Dr Shelby Clark is a principal investigator at Project Zero and a project director on the good project. She currently co leads the implementation of the good project lesson plans, investigating how engaging in a community of practice impacts teachers' implementation of the good projects. Lesson plans and the lesson plans impact on students' character growth and the ability to do good work. Shelby's work focuses on the development of intellectual, moral and civic character strengths in adolescent and young adults, with a focus on strengths such as curiosity, open mindedness and social responsibility. She received her PhD in applied Human Development at Boston University and a master's from the George Washington University in school counseling and a BA in history and music from Johns Hopkins University Shelby, formerly worked as a school counselor in St Paul, Minnesota, and we are so happy to have you both here today to join the podcast and to really share your expertise and just the depth and breadth of knowledge of this idea of character development that I think maybe gets thrown around in society on a superficial level, or kind of a surface level, maybe through social media or but we're really here to have a more nuanced in depth discussion, and I'm really excited to have your your knowledge to be shared today.
Dr. Scott Seider 03:51
Thanks so much for
Gerald Reid 03:52
having
Dr. Shelby Clark 03:52
us. Yeah, thanks so much.
Alexis Reid 03:54
So let's start with, like, the very practical question. So in Universal Design for Learning, it's like, let's define our terms early so we don't lose people in the conversation. So I wonder, can we develop what can we define? What character is like? How do we actually define it?
Dr. Scott Seider 04:10
So I think, I mean, there's, there's lots of different ways of defining character, but I think one that, one that we use in in our in our book, character compass is, is the qualities that motivate and enable people to act in ways that benefit themselves and and others, right? And and some you know, and so and so, different people you know, different people and organizations focus on different elements of that definition, right? Some focus on the character. Strip the character strengths and qualities necessary to motivate others. Others focus more on the the character strengths and qualities necessary to develop particular skills. So skills. Some people focus more on what are the qualities that enable you as an individual to thrive? Other people focus and institutions focus more on the qualities that enable you know an individual to kind of to kind of work on behalf of others. But, but we think all of that kind of kind of constitutes character, like it's the it is both the motivation. Emotional skills and the you know and the sort of the skill skills, for lack of a better word, it's both the qualities that enable an individual to thrive like you know, on you know themselves, but also to you know, to support the thriving of others
Alexis Reid 05:13
you know, as you're defining all of this, I'm thinking a lot about developmental psychology in general, that some of the most difficult terms to fully describe often encompass so much, right? I really loved the images that were in the book that were like, you know, this is character, and here are the component parts and the different categories that also go into building and understanding character. I wonder if there's anything more that you think helps to conceptualize it, because it feels like so much, and also it's at the core of almost everything, in my opinion.
Dr. Shelby Clark 05:47
Yeah, in the book we have an image where we talk about how characters made up of the cognitive, the affective and the behavioral. So really, the I mean, we'll talk more about the moral performance, civic and intellectual as well. But you know, really, there's the thinking, there's the feeling and the behaviors that go along with it. And really, people also talk about it a lot of times as the head, the heart and the hand. And so I think that that's something that you'll hear tossed around in the character literature a lot, and you see that a lot in a lot of different psychological literature. It comes out in a lot of different ways, but it happens in our character as well, because it is something that really brings up all of these different elements of who we are. It's, you know, it requires what we think about. It's our motivations. It also is the skills. That's the behavior element and the affective element. Is that motivation, and are we actually thinking that we want to behave in a way that is good, is helpful for others, is sort of towards the good, which is sort of the motivational aspect of it. Okay,
Dr. Scott Seider 06:50
if I could just add one thing that, you know, that Shelby kind of alluded to, you know, I just, I started with this sort of very broad definition of character, and I think that's something that educators and parents and counselors have found useful. And Shelby alluded to this is sort of parsing it into parsing the idea of character into four elements, like the moral, the performance, the Civic and the intellectual and, you know, and so and so. In other words, you know, when some folks talk about character, like what they really want to focus in on our moral qualities, like integrity and empathy, you know that allow, that allow individuals to kind of engage in ethical relationships with others, right? It's like other folks, when they're talking about character, they really are talking about qualities that that support performance, whether that's like tenacity or perseverance. You know, that that that enable a person to kind of push through challenges like, you know, still other people, when they're talking about character, they're, they're interested in the civic like, they're really interested in qualities like, you know, collaboration and teamwork and social responsibility that allow individuals to fulfill responsibilities to a community, you know. And last but not least, like some folks, when they're really, when they're talking about character, but they're really interested in sort of intellectual qualities like curiosity and intellectual humility, that that you know, that'll that that are sort of the qualities of a powerful learner. And so I think so I think that that that that you know, that way, that sort of way of parsing character into into different dimensions, I think can allow us to have much more specific conversations about
Speaker 3 08:18
about
Speaker 1 08:18
what a school or a family or an organization is trying to accomplish with its character work
Alexis Reid 08:22
to operationalize it and help it play out in different ways that you can see results in developing some of these, these aspects and attributes of individuals. Yeah, that's great. Thank you.
Gerald Reid 08:34
It reminds me a lot of how we're thinking about athletes. Now, you know, there's always been kind of this push towards excellence and being the best at what you do. And now there's finally, kind of a come around to this idea that they're whole people. And the way you're describing character is very holistic. It's very much about the whole person, not just about goal striving, but to kind of see all the different elements that you know what a whole life is really, what a whole life really is. It's not just about persevering and try to be the best at something. So, you know, my question in terms of the audience listening to this, you know, different institutions or families, or, you know, counselors, trying to understand how to work with this idea of character development. It sounds like part of it is trying to understand what character means to the the audience, you know, or the people who are thinking about doing something about, you know, character development, is it tricky to be able to kind of be on the same page about what is, quote, unquote good, you know, as we're kind of talking about with athletics, right? There's kind of a sticking point with a lot of coaches and a lot of you know, institutions about like, what does it mean to be have good character? And there could be differences of opinion. So what's your advice in terms of working with institutions, schools, classrooms, any type of culture you know, to work through that? Maybe dissonance between you know, ideas or what someone says is good, quote, unquote, good.
Dr. Shelby Clark 09:54
Definitely, there's different ways to think about what you want to focus on. And I think that's that's an interesting. Thing about the book that we've just worked on, the second edition of is really there can be different ways that you focus on are you a school that wants to focus on moral character? Do you want to focus on intellectual character? It doesn't mean that you have to focus on just one of these areas. You can take something from, you know, one of them, and something from another of them. You could focus on curiosity, which is more of an intellectual character strength, and you could focus on, you know, empathy, which is maybe more of a moral character, strength them. So it doesn't have to be that you box yourself into one of them. You might start with a value, sort something like that. That's something that we work with a lot at the good project, where you maybe that's like the very, the very initial thing that you start with at a school, and you really sort of think about what are our values and goals as a school, and you build up from there. Another thing that we've talked about before is that there's different ways that people think about the terminology that goes along with character and whether, if you call it character strengths, is that something that's maybe you know that people don't want to think about it that way in particular, and maybe they want to focus more on the individual character strengths themselves. So maybe it's really thinking about, you know, we want to just talk about curiosity, and we just want to talk about kindness and we just want to talk about respect. So maybe it's, you know, how you're actually talking about it at the school is more of an inroad for different populations. So it's just thinking about that sometimes. So I think there's a lot of different ways to start that conversation at a school, and it's, you know, again, everything's contextual. So thinking about who your particular population is, but I think it's figuring out maybe starting from those different avenues are sometimes the ways in. But where were you coming from? At it from? Scott,
Dr. Scott Seider 11:46
yeah, I mean, I think, I think I would just add on that, you know, so in some ways, what we're trying to do with this, with the character compass book that we wrote, is, is create a tool for for schools and potentially families and organizations, kind of interested in thinking more about, about about what, what does it mean for, what do they want their character focus to look like? And so in the book, what we do is we sort of do these case studies of four different schools that four different middle and secondary schools that we that we see as exemplars of one of those types of character. And so, so there's a school we call classical academy that really is a school that that that is, that is intensely, sort of emphasizing moral character development amongst its student body, and then sort of right down the street from Is it enough? Is another school that we call college bound middle school that's focusing on performance character, a third school focused on focused on civic character, and a fourth school focused on on intellectual character, and and I felt like our job as scholars and writers was to, was to capture as sort of as as vividly as possible what it looked like at these schools to to sort of intensively focus on each of those dimensions of character, rather than for us to kind of pass judgment or sort of offer our take on on which of these is, is, you know, is, quote, unquote, best like and so. And by sort of trying, sort of trying, sort of by trying to sort of faithfully show like, here's what it looks like to do moral character work at a school. Here are some of the strengths, here are some of the limitations, and then, and then, here's what it looks like to do performance character to school. And here's some of the strengths, and here are the limitations. I think our goal is for is for readers to kind of to kind of use those case studies to think through what, what makes the most sense in in their context, and, and as Shelby said, like that doesn't necessarily mean choosing a single, a single type of character. And I don't think any of those four schools would say they only care about moral character or civic character, intellectual character, but, but they were schools that that chose to sort of emphasize one of those types of character and and we thought it would be useful for for readers to get to kind of to see as vividly as possible what that might look
Alexis Reid 13:47
like. I love the way you did that, and I think it's important we're using the word strength a lot, right? And it's like, well, what if this isn't my strength? And I think when we think about all these components, there's so many overlaps in so many different ways. And sometimes a good entry point is to think about, what are the strengths already to be able to build on, to focus on and emphasize. It's like the idea of values and acceptance, commitment, therapy. They talk a lot about sometimes your values, they might be all a part of you, but some show up more vividly or strongly in different contexts, depending on your point of life. So it's interesting to think about, you know, these character traits and these aspects of the schools. I love how you told the story of the schools, and then you highlighted, rather than dictated, the way you were describing it. I think you did a really nice job of integrating and telling the story that way. And that's often what, you know, schools I work with are always asking for, can you just show me what this looks like? You know, not only do we have cognitive overload by all the acronyms and all the things that we learn in education, but also, you know, sometimes it's it's like putting that spotlight on the things that we notice are showing up really well and thinking about how we can amplify them instead of rebuilding or redoing. It's just the intentionality. And I think. Highlighted that really nicely.
Dr. Scott Seider 15:02
Thank you. And occurs to me, I mean, something's something interesting, is that it seems to me like a school community, could, you know, two different school communities thinking about their strengths, could come to opposite conclusions about about sort of what to focus on, right? Like, if you, let's say you imagine a school you could imagine two school communities that both, you know, like, have have your sort of hard driving, sort of academic achievement oriented spaces, you know, which, which kind of aligns with the, with the performance character, you know, kind of dimension, right? Like, and you So, you could imagine these schools as places where, where there's a lot of emphasis on performance character. And you could imagine one school saying, yeah, like, we're a place of learning, like our, you know, our students are striving to do well. Our teachers are striving to help students do well. Like, this is our core value. We should put our sort of chips on performance character. And you could imagine another school, you know, with the same in the same context, saying, hey, like, like, the performance character pieces is, is sort of ingrained in our community already. But what about the city, you know, but, but I think that that would be complemented well by sort of a focus on the Civic and and sort of making a decision not because they don't value performance character, but because they they feel like, hey, that's actually so integral to who we are as a community that let's, let's think about curriculum and programming to nurture the Civic and and so I think it's interesting to think about different school communities, kind of, kind of, you know, making, you know, making different and, you know, equally, sort of, you know, kind of valid decisions about, about where to put their their chips. Well, so to speak, when it comes to character development,
Alexis Reid 16:30
well, I wonder if you guys can say a little bit more too about the process of even building the awareness we You mentioned a little bit about, like, you know, what is your goal that you're aiming towards, to amplify or expand upon in your school community to build this culture and and I think, you know, I think about my work a lot, and I wonder how it resonates with with all of you, too, is, you know, sometimes people don't even know what their goals are. It's really difficult to identify like, this is a thing I care about, and this is the thing I want to do. It's more of like so much is dictated in our world right now, in our society, of what we're supposed to be doing and thinking and acting and all of these things, and sometimes it's really in disalignment. So I wonder if you can share a little bit more. I love how you focus on just building this awareness to even understand what direction to head in. If you could talk a little bit more about either what you captured in the book, or what you've been seeing in other research, or what you integrate into your own work and lives, too, about that awareness goal setting piece?
Gerald Reid 17:27
Yeah, I want to just add real quick before you respond. It's also, I think similar to what you're saying, is that sometimes we can kind of fall into what feels comfortable. So maybe over emphasize one, let's say trait or value, right, just because it is comfortable. But maybe there's, you know, change is hard, and being kind of expansive is hard. And even though it might be healthy for an individual or a culture to kind of evolve in some ways, not to, not completely, you know, as you said, Put all your chips into one, one area. So kind of branching off of Alexa's question, you know, how do you kind of help people come be, become aware of the possibility of other types of virtues and character traits that could also be important within a culture. Because, as you said, you know, especially with social media too, you know, kind of, kind of, sometimes you can get fixated on one virtue or one value because of the algorithms. You know, that's what they're doing, is they kind of fix it on one thing. Those
Dr. Scott Seider 18:17
are great questions I have. Again, I have a thought, but Shelby, let me defer to you if you if you want to start or if you want me to. So why
Dr. Shelby Clark 18:23
don't, why don't you go first, and then I'll see, if see where mine builds off of yours.
Dr. Scott Seider 18:27
Okay? I mean, so, so it's interesting. And so I'm doing some, some some work, you know, sort of some research on on families and parents right now, like on sort of, sort of not, not not totally distinct, but not totally related, either, but, but one of the things I find myself kind of continually emphasizing, and sort of this family work, is the importance of sort of parents being in conversation. That's the phrase I use, like in conversation with each other, about, sort of about what they're trying to comply accomplish, in terms of their their their kids, positive development and and I think, and I think the same thing is true for schools and institutions, like about the importance of being in conversation and so and so I remember, as you, as you mentioned in the introduction, I started as a high school teacher in the Boston Public Schools, and, and I was actually part of a high school that was going through kind of a like a that went through sort of a very formal visioning process about sort of what it wanted, it's, it's kind of mission and vision and plan to be for, you know, say, the next 10 years and and one of the things I remember as part of that process that I found really helpful is we had basically a couple, like big sort of a big tent meeting, like Big Tent sort of convenience, like, literally, you know, facilitated by a by a professional, where, where they, where they, we brought together sort of teachers, students and family members to have kind of conversation about, about who we want to be, Like, about sort of who we are as a school, and who we want to be as a school and and so I could imagine, for instance, like a, you know, sort of a, if I sort of think about that process, and I found that process to be really helpful, I could certainly imagine a world where a school that is trying to sort of make decisions about where it wants to go, character wise, like or an institution, character. Was to sort of, again, bring together stakeholders like, and, you know, in the school, has to decide, is that teachers, is that teachers and students? Is that teachers, students and families, teachers, students, families, community members and and I could imagine sort of a series of, you know, conversation like, let's talk about our moral character. Like, where the State of the Union in terms of moral character in our community, the State of the Union in terms of performance character, State of the Union in terms of intellectual character, in terms of civic character, and both, sort of, what are our strengths, what are our limitations, what are our growth areas? Like, to what extent is this a priority? And and then maybe, sort of, like, kind of, kind of, you know, whether that's, you know, in different communities, would make different decisions, right? Like, about whether they, you know, about how they sort of come to decisions, but like, through those series of conversations, you know, just, you know, making some decisions about about where we think we should put our chips going forward, like, let's take stock of where we are. Let's, let's talk about, you know, our strengths and our sort of growth areas. And then let's talk about, you know, you can't do everything. You know, I always sort of say one of the things, one of the things I say is, when I go into a school, if I see 10 core values, like, on the, on the wall, then, then, then, I'm pretty skeptical, like that, that, that, that's a school that's, that's sort of really, sort of doing work on those, on those core values, because I think that's just too many,
Gerald Reid 21:18
you know.
Dr. Scott Seider 21:18
I just think it's too many, you know, I think, I think given, given, like, how precious, you know, a resource time is in school communities and all of our lives. I just, I'm, I'm, I'd be surprised if a school is able to sort of say, these are our 10 core values and and we're working really hard on on all 10 of them. Whereas, if I go to a school and I see three or four, three or four, sort of, you know, three or four sort of focus areas, I think to myself, like, oh, this could this could play be a place that really has made some decisions about who it wants to be and and is pursuing that.
Alexis Reid 21:48
I jump in, Shelby, I want to hear your response too, but it's making me think about my work as an educational therapist and executive function. So essentially, you're saying, let's zoom out and look at the bigger picture of what we have in front of us. Take inventory, break it down into the categories that we notice, and then figure out what the plan of what's next is, and juggling too many things. I can't tell you, you probably, probably know this already, but in my work, I have so many conversations every single day with young people with their plates filled of 10 things that they think are the most important things that they have to do every single day and fit into their weeks. So not just for like organizations and schools, but also in our own lives. Like, how do we prioritize? This is such a difficulty across the board, I think, as people in academia who really are curious and care a lot about the work we do, we tend to have long lists of things we're interested in and engaged in. So prioritizing the energy, the time, the focus, it's so important that, you know, like you said, you take stock of what's in front of you before you even decide what comes next.
Dr. Shelby Clark 22:55
I think, yeah, my my big takeaway too, is just, you know, building in your own metacognition about your own you know about your processes, both you know we're teaching this to the students, but also doing it ourselves. So I think you know, something I really appreciate about the new version of the book is that you know our looking forward, looking back section, and where we went back and we interviewed principals and students and, you know, and we asked them, you know, how, how did this impact you? You know, did do you feel like the schools had a lasting impact on your your character development? Or, you know, we asked how the principals how things were going. And so, for example, at Bright Ideas Middle School, which is the intellectual character chapter. Something they were saying is, really, you know, after we've reflected about this, the school has been open for a while, we've realized that, you know, we actually do need to focus a bit more on sort of these, you know, basic social, emotional learning skills, in addition to intellectual character and not saying that we're, you know, tossing aside intellectual character. But the school was founded as an intellectual character charter school that was, you know, how it was created. It didn't turn into that from something else. And so, you know, they've now had time to sort of go back and realize that they needed to build in a little bit more of that, sort of as a behavioral management tool in some ways, because they weren't having enough of that along the way. And so I think having that time to reflect and realize that that's something that they also need to prioritize, in addition to their intellectual character, because they've had the time to now reflect and really go back to the drawing board a little bit. And just as a side note, I also do a lot of work, just in general, about intellectual risk taking and intellectual character with my colleague Fedora Souter, who helped us with this edition of the book. And we see that across the board in a lot of the schools that are really focused on intellectual character. Or they they do that with the students midway through the class, where they really go back to the drawing board and they say, you know, let's talk as a class about our priorities for the character for this class, you know. So I think just again, like, you know, modeling that ourselves with our priorities.
Gerald Reid 25:20
Absolutely, I do want to hear some, some wonderful examples, too, from the book and from your experience in your research, almost like specific examples, as you're saying. You know, what does this look like in practice? But before we get into that, I just want to ask a, kind of a general question about, you know, from your research, from your, you know, philosophizing, like, how is, how is character developed? You know, are certain people kind of born with certain traits that kind of lead them into one direction of the type of character that they developed? Or is it kind of related to personality traits? Or, you know, in some ways, you know, like being more conscientious is something people have more or less of, and that can relate to maybe persistence or detail being detail oriented, and some people maybe have more empathy. Or, you know, how much of it is, you know, internally developed and how much of is externally developed through all the influences that are there. I mean, there's so many influences from any level, culturally, societally, family, the people we interact with, our friendship group, like, there's so many influences. So how do we think about the development of character? Because I think that's a good starting point before we get into the actual programs and and what it looks like to develop it.
Dr. Scott Seider 26:32
That's a great question. That's a great question. I I teach an adolescent psychology class at Boston College and and we spend some time talking about, like, different, ways, different answers, that different, that different psychologists have to that to that question. And so, you know, some folks think, okay, like, if you want to nurture a character, character strengths, like, you know, the the key is reasoning like, you've got to, you've got to sort of engage cognitively with, you know, with young people and show Hey, like, you know, here's, you know, if you know, if you want young people to act with empathy, for example, then we need to sort of like, sort of sort of intellectually talk through, like, what what empathy is, and why it matters. And sort of, you know, you can you say, here's a here's the dilemma, and what does it mean to sort of be empathetic in this situation? And other folks say, like, nope, nope. Like, the emphasis isn't necessarily reasoning, but like, a focus on care, like, like we need to, we need, if you want to nurture empathy, like, what you need to do is sort of create opportunities within schools, like, for, for, you know, to engage in sort of caring behaviors like, and to model caring behaviors and to reinforce caring behaviors like, and that's, and that's sort of putting more of an emphasis on the action right, like and, and then there's these other, these other folks who who say it's really, it's really about habit like, it's about habit formation like that, that, you know, there's, there's really no such, you know, they might say there's really no such thing as sort of, like, empathy, broadly, where, if, like, Oh, if you sort of nurture empathy, like, you get empathetic behavior across the board. What it is, is that like, you need to, like, you know, help young people say, like, you know, to act empathically, like, in this situation, is to do this thing, like, you know, this is, you know, I'm going to model for you how to hold the door open, you know, for, you know, for a person who needs assistance, right? Like, and I'm going to reinforce that for you. And I'm going to, and that's sort of like, that little, sort of more schema, that little cognitive schema, like, Okay, I've taught that, but I shouldn't expect that to sort of automatically translate into, you know, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to make a donation to a charitable organization. Like, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to teach, like, a different schema, you know that, hey, like, you know, once a month, like, our family sits down and we sort of decide on an organization to to make a contribution to. And I'm going to teach that like, and, you know, and, and so those are, you know, those are just three of the, you know, kind of the the schools of thought about, what does it mean to to actually sort of nurture equality, like empathy or integrity or perseverance, like and so on and so forth, and, and, I think, sort of as Shelby alluded to at the beginning, when she kind of made reference to, kind of the head, the heart and and the hand that that, in truth, like, it's probably a combination of all of that, right? Like, it's like, we need to, like. We need to, we need to, you know, engage young people and thinking about like, you know, what does it mean to act empathically in a particular situation? We need to model it for them. We need to give them opportunities to practice it. We need to reinforce it. We shouldn't assume that like it will automatically translate from one setting to another without kind of us as sort of parents and educators kind of kind of helping that transference occur and so. So those are, those are a couple of the things that we talked about in class when we talk about, what does it mean to, you know, to support character development.
Gerald Reid 29:40
I love that answer, and it's very integrated. And you know, the more I've gone to become a psychologist and even practice, the integration is so important. And you're saying it's not one thing, you know, and there's different ways to approach, there's different angles to take, to support a human being to flourish or to overcome their challenges, and in your case, to develop moral traits. So I love your answer, and it reminds me of some of the bullying research that I did at Boston University when I was a student with Melissa Hall and Jen green around, you know, bullying prevention, there's no silver bullet. There's not one thing you can do to stop, you know, to prevent bullying, to support, you know, the kids who are being bullied that it's all, all hands on deck approach. It's creative. It's being, you know, looking at it from different perspectives. So it reminds me a lot of that. So I really appreciate your answer that there's a lot of and it takes creative thinking to be able to figure it out and individualize it to the person as
Gerald Reid 30:32
well.
Alexis Reid 30:33
I'm going to challenge you, because I wonder if any of the audience members might be thinking, okay, so we can teach empathy, right, just by, like, building it into our repertoire, doing more of it, being exposed to it, practicing it. Would that be a logical, reasonable thing to say?
Dr. Shelby Clark 30:51
I would say yes that. I mean, the research demonstrates Yes, but I wouldn't say it's easy. I wouldn't say that any of it is necessarily, you know, incredibly easy. I mean, we're talking about habit building here. We're talking about, you know, things that needs to be developed over time. They need to be reinforced in different situations. So, yes, I'm not, I'm not saying this is, you know, I have a child who, you know, this is what I do for work. And I'm still like, Why do you have a fixed mindset most
Gerald Reid 31:24
of
Gerald Reid 31:24
the time?
Dr. Shelby Clark 31:25
So you know, this is not something that that is just going to happen, but it is something that we see, you know, over time, that we and with, you know, enough reinforcement, enough half of it building. We can see changes over time, and we can see it develop in students. But, yeah, it's not, it's not a flip of a switch,
Alexis Reid 31:44
yeah,
Dr. Scott Seider 31:45
but I'd say, I'd say that's all that's sort of, I'd say teaching is all we've got. Like, you know, I think, I mean, you know, I think that's, you know, I think the way all of these character strengths develop is through teaching and modeling and nurturing and conversation and, you know, there's, you know, there's probably, there's probably a tiny percent, you know, if you think of sort of a spectrum, if you spectrum, if you take a quality, like empathy, like or integrity or person, it's, you know, there's, there's probably some tiny percentage of folks on one end of the spectrum, or the other end is, you know, there's some tiny percentage of folks who are just born deeply, deeply, sort of sensitive to others, you know, others needs, and some tiny percentage of people, like, who are, who are totally indifferent to other folks needs. And like, we would probably say, probably say, both of the, you know, both the extreme ends of the spectrum is probably, you know, a challenge for folks on both ends. And then I think, but I think everybody else you know, it's all about, you know, what are the, what are the learning experiences, you know, in in your family, in your school, in your church, in your community,
Gerald Reid 32:41
like that
Dr. Scott Seider 32:42
that helps you think about, you know, think about what it means to be empathetic and empathetic, and what that looks like, and how to do it.
Gerald Reid 32:49
We had Dr Marianne Wolf on, and she's an expert in reading, and she said something so interesting. She said, you know, reading is actually where you develop perspective taking, and by nature of that, you can develop empathy. And, you know, it's just an interesting context in which we're trying to, you know, help world and character development within the context of, as we always talk about, like kids. She said, you know, high school students haven't, there's so many they've surveyed. They haven't even read one full book throughout high school. You know, so not having that deep engagement in reading and being able to take perspective. So as we're all saying, you know, it's so wrapped up in everything we do. It's not just one thing. So there's a lot of ways that we can kind of approach that I was
Alexis Reid 33:29
just gonna say that, you know, I love that you're thinking about the head, the heart and the hands, because, you know, related to neuroscience too, we know that the brain is not just working in isolation in one part, right? To really have learning happen and habits to be formed, we need to have all of these different aspects firing and coming online with repetition, right? Not just once, and we're one and done. I'll never forget a story a client of mine told me years ago, he's a high school. He goes to a public high school in the area, and he said, you know, all my teachers tell us to have, like, a growth mindset to your to your point, and you know, we have the posters on the wall, and then I get a bad grade, and I ask for feedback to be able to make an improvement, and they tell me my grade is my grade. And I'm like, oh, no, such a missed opportunity, right? Because I think it's so important to remember that, you know, we can build in these opportunities and so many of our interactions. A lot of the work I do in talking about building in supports for executive function to strengthen those skills, people are like, what's the thing to do? And like, it's never one thing. It's about how we approach each other, how we approach situations and challenges. And, you know, I always say the intervention is often in the interaction.
Dr. Scott Seider 34:45
I 100% agree. And interesting. One of the schools that we focused on, the school, classical academy that focused on moral, moral character, something was so interesting about them that I remember is, you know, so they, they offered this sort of weekly ethics class, like with all the students in this. School took an ethics class where they focused on the school's core values, one of which was integrity. And, you know, and so in ethics class, students would be reading and talking about integrity and studying, studying different sort of conceptions of integrity, whether it was like Gandhi or Plato or Dr Seuss and and something that the educators really wanted to talk to me about is say, like, hey, like, we we see our students, like, have these incredible conversations about integrity in in ethics class, and then school let out and, and we'll see, you know, and we'll see something happen, sort of like, you know, literally on the street in front of the school where, where, like, we can see our student, you know, our students like not acting with integrity in that moment. And, and, and I say, you know, and what, and, and they were really sort of interested by that, and focused on that and wanting to that, and wanting to sort of try, to try to do something about that. And I think it relates to the point you're making that we've been talking about, about, about how integrated it all is, like, it's not just, it's not just one thing, you know. And you know, Jerry, a moment ago, was talking about, you know, Mary and Wolf started talking about reading. And like, way reading can build perspective taking, which is a key part of empathy. And I was, I was a, I was a former high school English teacher, and so I'm very much on board with, with the the importance of books, like for for doing that work. But, but actually, you know, it's funny, there was this, you know, terrific Harvard English professor, Elaine scary, or this essay years and years ago called the difficulty of imagining other persons, where she was sort of describing a similar phenomena where it's just like, you can read a book that that sort of offers, like, you know, that that isn't seeking to nurture, like, your empathy around sort of a particular topic or group of folks, like or or single character. And then there are some folks who close the book and and enact in very unempathetic ways, right? It's like, and, and so I do think it's, it's it's, it's not, it's never going to be just one thing. It's like, it's reading the book. And, to your point, Alexis, like the teachers modeling empathy, like in their interactions with the students. And then, you know, the school sort of reinforcing, like, the importance of acting empathically in the hallway, like, and even when you're outside of school and online and and and all of those things kind of, kind of intertwining. I
Dr. Shelby Clark 36:59
was just going to jump in and say there's quite a few different character curriculums or programs around reading and and character development. So I know like Dr Karen Bolin, who used to be at Boston University, she's done a lot of work on narrative and reading and character and also the Jubilee center, out of the UK has one which I think is called, like the heroes curriculum, maybe also which. So I just think, just to this topic, there's a there's a lot of focus on, how can we develop moral character in particular through reading. But I was also going to say that my own team at the good project has done a lot of work on role models in particular. And how can we, you know, really focus on who are our role models, and how do they impact us? And not necessarily just ones in books, but that is sometimes who kids bring up. There's a lot of Harry Potter. There's a lot of BTS, which is not somebody that I really know, but a lot of k pop in there, yeah. So a lot of different people. This was kids all over the world, actually, and so, yeah, just again, really emphasizing the importance of who are we looking at and how is that building our character. A really interesting part of that study was just that the way that kids describe character and what is important to them is often, maybe not what is important today, in terms of how people are describing sort of the important skills for the future of work. So the kids are really focused on, you know, like my role model, works really hard. They're hard working, they're diligent, they're gritty. And, you know, that's not really what we are focused on in terms of, we want people to be adaptable and flexible and creative, and so that's something we've been really focused on in that study.
Gerald Reid 38:42
Yeah. I mean, all these things take a lot of patience, as you're saying. I mean, we're essentially, I'm a therapist, I work with people. So it's like, change is hard, as you're pointing out, and it takes a, you know, it takes patience, and it's almost like it's, it must be that much harder nowadays because kids have, I think, less patience, just because of social media and technology has made it so instant in that stuff, a tricky part of it, I love the idea of role models. And I think identity is seems so attached and connected to character traits, almost like the way you see yourself, you know, the classic example of, like, you know, I don't want to do that thing because it's not, quote, unquote cool, you know, when actually, that thing could actually be good for you and good for somebody else. And so I think that's so important. I've heard, you know, I've heard from, you know, a school, and I've a kid, a number of kids, who have said this one school where, you know, the most popular, the most athletic kids who are seniors, if they get a little bit too cocky, you know, people around them, you know, keep them in check. And I'm like, wow, like, if culture like that, that is, it's not heard of, you know, it's not common. And I always say, like, like, good leadership is actually not common. When you see it, it's like, you know, hold on to it and, you know, celebrate it because it's rare.
Dr. Shelby Clark 39:53
I was encouraged that the top role models were parents. Still, that's wonderful.
Gerald Reid 39:59
Interesting. Can you say more about that?
Dr. Shelby Clark 40:02
Well, well, so particularly, I'll just give you briefly, like the question was, who do you see as, like, your good work role model? Because that's who we were asking about. But so the top people that they described were their parents. And then that was followed by celebrities and teachers were in there. And then there were some other people, but
Gerald Reid 40:23
that's great.
Alexis Reid 40:23
I call it like the Wizard of Oz effect. Like, sometimes we need to see behind the curtain of like, what it takes to get to this place of being successful or potentially seen as a role model, that it's so important for us as adults to, like, pull it back and be a little bit more transparent, so young people can see the process going back to executive functions, they often can't see what it takes or to be able to think into the future of like, well, what will this amount to? I need to see what the outcome is like right away. And I think that's a big challenge with thinking about character development too, especially when you know schools try to enact and integrate a lot of these curriculum and these processes that they're like, Well, we did it for a year, and you know this, we still have behavioral issues or things going on, or our scores didn't go up. We see this a lot with universal design for learnings. It's like, it's a process, right? It's not just you do it one year and see what happens to see like real change and growth and cultural shifts and changes. It takes such a long time and a lot of dedication. I wonder if you guys can speak a little bit to that and your experiences from the schools you worked with too, because you could get, I don't want to use the word burnt out, but you could be like, well, we put in so much of this, and now what's next?
Gerald Reid 41:40
In
Dr. Scott Seider 41:41
some ways, I think the second of it is sherbert. Of our book is kind of like a fun has, like it, like, offer some fun thoughts about that, like, as a useful thoughts about that, in the sense that I do think that for, you know, to be a teacher, you know, for that matter, to be a parent, like, you know, is there is a leap of faith involved, right, where you're sort of saying, I'm going to do this modeling work and this practice work, and this sort of, you know, feedback work now and, and maybe I'll see, you know, sort of immediate returns on on that investment in terms of, like, you know, growth, and whether it's perseverance or gratitude or empathy or integrity or social responsibility. But maybe I won't right, like, you know, as Jerry was saying, like these, you know, like, sort of making, you know, personal change, like, takes time, like, it happens over over time. And so I do think sometimes being a teacher means, like, means saying, I'm going to invest this, this energy and this focus now, and sort of not know, you know, you know exactly how it plays out, like, for the majority of my students, as they go off into the into the world, like, and but the connection to our the second edition, or a book, is that, is that, for the second edition, what we did is we tracked down, you know, a number of the young people that we had interviewed originally in 2012 when they were middle schoolers and high schoolers. It's now, you know, a decade and a half later, they're adults, like their parents. In some cases, they're professionals, and we track them down, and we sort of asked them, like, tell us a little bit about what impact it had on you going to a school that, you know, a high school that focused on moral character, or a high school that focused on intellectual character, or so on. And it was really, it was really fun, I mean, and I think they were, you know, bought, you know, you know, overwhelmingly, you know, like felt like that high school experience had, had had a powerful influence on on the people that they are today. You know, there was a young person, you know, working 1000s of miles away from, you know, the school that she the school that she had gone to, who's now a social worker, who does work with, with, with, who sort of works for the state like we in terms of, you know, for the Department of Youth and Family Services, in terms of, you know, in terms of the very challenging work of sometimes separating young people from their parents, or sort of supervising young people, like, who's whose parents are being investigated for one reason or other. And and she really talked about, actually, the the ways in which the empathy she had an opportunity to think about at that moral character school, you know, influences her, sort of on the day to day, like, and then, and then a young person we spoke to it, you know, who had gone to the school focused on civic character. He had actually spent years working as a producer, like on podcasts and entertainment, sort of entertainment, and, you know, sort of audio entertainment. And then just recently decided to go back to school, you know, to study policy, to discuss sort of public policy. And, and he said, in some ways, I feel like I'm he said, I feel like I'm reconnecting with that height, like the high schooler that I was. And, and he says, he says, and that's a good thing. He's like that, that kid. He's that kid speaking to himself about himself. He said that kid had it right. And, and he really, he really said, you know until you know, until it wasn't like, until the interview, he had very consciously said to himself, oh, like going to a high school focused on civic character is what's contributing to me, you know, sort of making this career shift in my mid my mid 20s, but, but as we talked, he sort of, he sort of started putting it together and saying, like, Oh, like this, you know, this. This really does feel very resonant with. With who I was as a teenager, and we have quite a number of stories
Alexis Reid 45:04
like that. Can I press pause to highlight this for a second? Because I made mention in the introduction, I was talking about your bio sky, about thinking about mixed methods, approaches to research, right? This is such a great example of how like the data and the numbers don't always tell the whole story, and sometimes just sitting with people. We have the privilege of doing this every day in our work with the people we work with, but for schools and for parents to sit down and have a conversation, and, you know, ask these questions like, what's the thing you remember? What's the thing you're proud of? What's the thing you wish you could do again? Or, what is the thing that you carry with you from this experience, it's so rich, and it often becomes like, so therapeutic. And then, you know, to connect it to, I can I notice that something you really value about and brings it back to character. You know, it's so beautiful. And just having that opportunity for you guys to go back and interview those students and teachers alike,
Gerald Reid 45:58
it's, it's, it reminds me so much of, how many times we hear, you know, young people who, I think we have to remember too, young people are young. I'm kind of saying that facetiously, like, yeah, they are. They are still, you know, their brains are developing. They're, they don't know what's going on. They're, they're scared. You know, all these other things going on, and it takes time to mature and to care about certain things and to change what you care about, right? And how many times have we heard as kids get older, like, yeah, we know. I used to hear that either from you as a therapist or you as you know you're working with,
Gerald Reid 46:30
or
Gerald Reid 46:30
parents or teachers or schools, and later in life, they're like, Yeah, you know what? Now, now I understand it, you know. But if it didn't happen, maybe that light bulb moment would have never happened later on in life, as you're saying, Scott, so I think I'm thinking of the word trust, and trust comes from consistency. And as we're going back to the original point, or the question about, you know, how does this work over time? You know, How does culture change? How do we How does this system, you know, actually develop over time, that the results may actually not be immediate and they may not, may not be quantifiable, they may be something that's held in the person's heart that later in their life. I think it really exemplifies that trust and that consistency of how we treat other people, even if we don't see the results. And that's why, you know, sometimes we can get burnt out because this work is hard. You know, it's hard, and it's, a it's almost like The Giving Tree. You know, you keep giving and you keep giving, you keep trying. But the results may not be so tangible, and they may be delayed, but they may certainly be there in the end in some capacity, even in a small way.
Dr. Shelby Clark 47:33
I think the the story about is it classical, with the ethics,
Gerald Reid 47:39
yeah,
Dr. Shelby Clark 47:40
and their, their decision to, they had, you know, this really powerful ethics curriculum. And then, you know, with George Floyd and everything, they decided to to shift away from that a little bit. And then you could probably tell this better than me, Scott, but, you know, and they, they, they moved away from it. And then when we talked to them, they were realizing that they wanted to maybe bring back some of that ethics curriculum, and then that they they realized that they were missing some of the elements of that, and that they really appreciated some of the ways that that built their students character. And I think that just also speaks to sort of the power of of how important it is to be doing these things over time and not, not that there aren't things that we can grow and change, and that maybe we need to to move with the times, and we move with, you know, and bring new things in, but also that, I think, that they realize that, you know, there they had built this really important thing over time. So I don't know if you would agree with that, Scott, but
Dr. Scott Seider 48:39
yeah, absolutely. I mean, it also connects to, I mean, that story also connects, actually, to what we're talking about, you know, a little while ago, about about sort of institutions, kind of, sort of being continually in conversation about about what that, what do they want their character work to look like. And so the classical Academy, the school that we studied that focused on moral character, you know, over, you know, about seven or eight years ago, as as, sort of a as Shelby alluded to as sort of the Black Lives Matter movement was rising. Some of the faculty at the school started to say, Oh, like this, this ethics curriculum that we built is, is, is really very, very white centered, and sort of the philosophers and the the ethicists that it's that it's that it's leaning on right? Because it was sort of introducing students to Plato and Socrates and Rousseau and so on and so forth and and so there was sort of a period where the where the school kind of decided to move away from it, like they sort of said, like this, this doesn't feel like it's meeting. It's meeting the moment that, you know, that we're in. And then, but then, just a year or two ago, a new leader took over, and and she sort of as part of her sort of leadership, you know, sort of leadership entry started talking to alumni of the school. Sort of just reached out to alumni at school and said, sort of, you know, is it something similar to what we did, where she says, sort of tell me what was important about your experience and and the ethics curriculum kept coming up over and over and over again, from from, from all of the students that she was speaking. To. And I should say, this is a school, you know, compressed predominantly black and Latino students, which I think sort of contributed to the teachers in sort of 2021 22 sort of saying, oh, like, maybe this, this isn't the right thing for us. But the alumni were saying like that, that was something really important for us. And so I think that this leader, this leader had sort of the the the, you know, both the leadership skills and the vision to sort of say, like to say, we can, we can figure this out. We, you know, the answer, the answer isn't to bring back the exact same curriculum that we had in 2012 The answer isn't to, you know, drop the drop the curricula, the ethics curriculum, sort of whole, whole cloth. It's to, it's to, sort of work in conversation, to to, to make the adaptations, you know, that that makes sense for the character work and the school that we want to be right now and and that's kind of happening right now in real time. And I think it's really, really exciting.
Alexis Reid 50:51
What advice would you give to educators, especially because I hear this all the time, they're like, Oh, we've got this SEL curriculum, we have this other curriculum, and I also have to teach all this other content, you know, and they they're getting kind of burnt down and bringing more things in. I know what I say, but I'm curious about what you all say in and how to integrate a lot of this work together. Because as you're telling the story about the ethics curriculum, I imagine they're bringing in, you know, more current events into the room where we can talk about real life situations that connects to what they were learning in the ethics curriculum. I wonder if you can share a little bit about what you suggest to educators, and thinking about how to not see this as like one more thing, because we all know the value of these curricula, but how do we help them to better understand the bigger picture value and integrating it all in.
Dr. Shelby Clark 51:41
Obviously, I would always, you know, if I could make my ideal school, I always think it's great to have time for some explicit learning around character. You know, if you can have an advisory, we talk, I talk about that with the with the bright ideas Middle School. Great Love that. But if you don't have that, I think there's so many other ways to try and build it into the time. You know, one thing that they really use a lot at Bright Ideas Middle School is the thinking routines. And again, that sort of goes back to the point of like we're trying to build the habit of these character strengths, but they also really work really well with I mean, I'm a little bit biased, because a lot of them come from Project Zero, but I'm putting that aside, and they, you know, they work really well with with, you know, everyday material from class. You know, they're both asking you to think and think of alternative perspectives. They're asking you to ask questions or building your curiosity. They're asking you to do different things, but they're surrounded by the actual material from a course, so something like that, which is both allowing you to build different habits and different character strengths, but they're actually using the material of the course, or doing something as simple as using more group work, which is really asking you to use your skills of empathy and things like that, but you know, at the same time is focused on doing the actual classwork, so doing things that are more about, you know, the pedagogical skills that are actually, you know, actually building character strengths at the same time, but that are really, you know, deliberately focusing on certain character strengths as well, are What I immediately go to,
Dr. Scott Seider 53:22
yeah, maybe what I would add is that, you know, to try to be sort of just really concrete, like, you know, to answer you, in terms of answering your question, is, you know, I sort, I would say, I would sort of say, the schools choose a small number of characters, you know, given the time, is such a precious commodity and a commodity, and as Alexis said, You know, like there's so many, there's so many sort of responsibilities on educators plates. I'd say Choose, choose a small number of of character strengths, like our core values that, like you as a school community, can, can get behind, feel are important, and are willing to spend some time on, even if it's, even if it's just two, you know, I think that that's, that's, that's totally fine. Then I would say, take a both and approach to kind of, kind of teaching those, those those values, of those strengths, meaning, have a specific part of the school day where, you know, whether that's advisory or sort of a particular course, or a particular sort of, you know, weekly meeting, community meeting, where, where you explicitly sort of work on, on teaching what those core values are and what they look like, and sort of recognizing them when they happen. And then also encourage teachers to seek out opportunities to kind of bring those into their curriculum like and to use that language in their in their curriculum, whether it's like you know, you know, paying attention to sort of when a character in a book, you know it demonstrates integrity, or when you know a historical figure sort of acts in a socially responsible way, or whether you know, or you know, or, for that matter, sort of like demonstrating perseverance, like in solving a math equation. And so you're so you're doing both, like there's like an explicit place where you're sort of teaching what these values mean, and you're kind of reinforcing them all you know throughout the rest of the school experience. And and I. Think the payoff, you know, for, for doing that is, is what you do, is you end up, you end up sort of establishing what you know, a character vocabulary, or you end up establishing a vocabulary for talking about important things that happen. Like all four of the schools that we, that we studied, they focused on different types of character but, but because they sort of did the work, you know, in their own ways, to kind of nurture kids understandings of their particular brand of character. They had a common vocabulary across the school to talk about challenging, you know, challenging and celebratory things like and so, you know, and that vocabulary was different in each school, but, but they all had it. And so when, when terrible things happened in the world, the school had a vocabulary to talk about it. When celebratory things happened, like, the school had a vocabulary to talk about it, and, and, and I think that was very important for, like, those, those schools being sort of Healthy Places, for for young people,
Gerald Reid 55:54
I love that. It reminds me of almost like, you know, people being in therapy, they have to develop the language to express themselves, to get better. There's kind of a foundation that you're building to be able to process and think critically and so forth. I love that,
Alexis Reid 56:07
and it reinforces all the executive function skills that I'm constantly talking about, too, right? How do you actually pause and think before we are initiating and enacting? Right? How do we build that little bit of inhibition to be able to make decisions that are going to be good for yourself and then also for the broader community.
Gerald Reid 56:26
I like what you said, too. I just want to point this out that it's not just about looking at problems and things going wrong, but also when things are going right, and both things are kind of the full scope of life. And it's important to be able to apply these ideas to the full scope of life, to look for it everywhere. Well,
Alexis Reid 56:42
it's going back to what you said earlier about the schema, right? When we develop that as a schema, as a language, as something we're familiar with, it becomes more automatic, becomes more of what we just do and how we talk about things. But I love it as a framework, and really thinking about, you know, the pedagogical frameworks that we build schools on. It's not just a curricula, it's not just content or assessments we get through. There's like a framework for how we prioritize things. I don't really want to use the word hierarchy, but it's almost like we can build from there, because so many things are connected to this idea of character development. And really, I always say from a positive youth development perspective, that we're in the business of helping people become great contributors to their own lives and to the broader, you know, society, as we're navigating through this life together, right? It's not just about one thing. It's about, how are we helping to develop young people to figure out who they are and what's important to them and where they fit in the world. Because I think at the core of a lot of the things we're seeing in society, that's probably one of the biggest issues, this loss of identity and loss of connection, even in such a disconnect in such an overly seemingly connected world.
Gerald Reid 57:59
Yeah, I have go ahead. Sorry.
Dr. Shelby Clark 58:02
I was just going to note that at Bright Ideas middle school, and I think this was at many of our schools that the teachers really had this, you know, practice of noticing and naming when the students were doing a particular character strength. And also this was sort of led into their character ceremony at the end of the week. And so you would see them being like, you know, great curiosity. Ben, you know, for asking that question during class, they would call out or and you would see the students doing it to each other and be like, Oh, that was really intellectually humble of you, Sarah, to name that you didn't know what was going on. And then at the end of the week, they would have a character ceremony where the teachers and the students would do that also for each other, and be like, Oh, they, you know, Sarah was really intellectually humble in science class this week. And then they would all clap for each other. And so again, just to be like, they have that language together. And then it's such a great way to be calling out, like, these really positive things that were happening.
Gerald Reid 59:04
Totally
Alexis Reid 59:04
love that so much, planting all the seeds.
Gerald Reid 59:08
Yeah, I don't this. We're kind of getting towards the end, and this is just so valuable. I don't know if this is answerable as a question or if it's just kind of a something popping in my head. But, you know, in the way that social media has become so entrenched in people's lives, I'm just curious about, you know, I've heard young people talk about this too, how sometimes like character could be, you know, almost performative, in a way that, and I think this probably just gets back to how important real relationships are in terms of developing character. That's really where you can feel it. It's not something that's just kind of on a screen. It's not something that's even intellectualized. You know, it's not even like this conversation could be somewhat intellectualized, but it's really feeling it on an emotional level, as you say, with the heart, when you can see it and know that it's happening in real time. And you actually care about that person. That person cares about you. So, you know, and maybe in this other thought that I was thinking of is just, you know, people being able to disagree and have that character of being able to talk about difficult topics, and not kind of just fall into an argument, but rather an intellectual, as you're saying, curiosity to, you know, not immediately, kind of put your guard up or attack, but there's, you know, there's an acceptance that there are differences, and there's an acceptance of it as kind of a foundation, and then being able to engage in the dialog, which, you know, in some ways, that's how family therapy works, you know. And as I see in my practice, but you know, it's almost like society as a whole is like a big family. I always think like, Oh, I think we need family therapy as a society. But how, you know, what are some maybe practical ways that happens in schools where that you know that that foundation of being able to listen to each other and not immediately fall into kind of, you know, anger and resentment, or, you know, putting people down necessarily.
Dr. Scott Seider 1:01:02
One thing that your, your question, sort of gets me thinking a little bit about, is like, you know, to, you know, we had, we had sort of a conversation earlier about not just assuming that things transfer from one, from one space to the next. And, and I think that, you know, social media, AI, like, creates, like, new, new spaces that that we need to, that we need to think about, sort of what it means to build character in those spaces and so, you know, so just as an example, like, I mean, I think that you sort of alluded to this, you know, Jerry, in some ways like, I think that, I think that, you know, young people and older people can be, can be much crueler to each other, like over social media, than they ever would be in person. So true you know, young people who you know, who might you know, sort of be empathetic, like you know, in interacting with a person in in real life, might be, might might behave in some pretty callous ways, like when it, when it comes to to to their online interaction. And so I think that we need to, we need to think about, like, how to, how to sort of build sort of schemas for, you know, for sort of moral behavior, civic behavior, intellectual behavior, you know, in in all of these spaces, these, these, you know, suddenly, you know, to the extent that it counts as a space like, suddenly, we have AI, which, which sort of creates, which creates, you know, which prints both opportunities for sort of intellectual character exploration around, like Curiosity, but also, sort of also could shut down curiosity, right? Like, by virtue of just sort of saying, oh, like, I can just, I can just have this, this machine answer the question for me, and and so and so. I think, like, we, you know, I think that we just need to sort of continuously think about, how do we sort of take qualities that we care about and help young people figure out what those look like in in all of the spaces they inhabit,
Dr. Shelby Clark 1:02:53
and just to the classroom some, I have a lot of thoughts about that, but just briefly, I was just going to say that I think Part of it is, you know, at Bright Ideas middle school, they do a lot of practice of having conversations. You know, they have this in the history and English classroom, they do this thing called giving your two cents, where somebody gets to come up to the front of the class and just lead a conversation at the beginning of the class about a question that they have. And I give an example of that in the chapter, and then the other kids ask all these questions that they have about that. And so that is the bait, you know, the beginning I think, of having more difficult conversations and and we talked about a lot about, you know, this beginning of intellectual risk taking and the idea that you can be wrong, and intellectual humility, that you don't know everything about your you know that other people are wrong and you are wrong. And so really starting to get all of those norms in the classroom before you have some of these more maybe Hot Topic conversations in the classroom. And then also just really relying on our norms in the classroom when we have some of those more difficult conversations. And that's one of those ways that character strengths can help us when we've practiced them. Being like, you know, Curiosity is one of our character strengths, so we need to practice that right now and be curious about, you know, this other person's opinion. So I think those are just some of the things that I think about
Gerald Reid 1:04:26
that's really helpful. And, you know, I'm just imagining, you know, being a child growing up with social media that, as you're saying, like I could be wrong, you could be wrong, and that's okay. I feel like there's such a perfectionistic, you know, kind of energy in the air for kids growing up, like, everything has to be perfect, or you have to always be right, or you always have to be a certain way that it doesn't leave room for that gray area of like, okay, maybe, you know, you're 20% right. Maybe I'm, you know, 30% right. You know there's, there's degrees of validity and accuracy to what people are saying. It doesn't even have to be. Who's right, who's wrong. It's almost like, you know, dialectical behavior therapy, you know, suggest, like, there's a little bit of wisdom in each of what people are saying, and you have to kind
Alexis Reid 1:05:08
of find that
Dr. Shelby Clark 1:05:09
wisdom
Gerald Reid 1:05:12
Exactly. And two things could be true. And it doesn't have to be like, true or not true. It could be to a degree or in a context, it could be true. I always find in therapy, like, you know, I'm always trying to find what does the person really mean when they say that? I was talking to my class the other the other day about, you know, people who may say prejudice things, and they said, What do you do when you have a patient who says something prejudice? I said, well, first of all, you have to be curious about, where is it coming from? Is it truly just genuinely a hateful comment, or is there something behind it? You know, that's kind of led them to get to the point of saying this, or are they even not even saying what they really mean? They're just saying that because it's easier to say and then what they really want to say that might be more vulnerable, or, you know, more deeply rooted, and, you know, from some sort of trauma or some sort of other, you know, you know, things going on inside of them or in their own lives. So I really like the fact that you brought that up. You know, there's different ways to teach these these traits, and it doesn't necessarily just have to be, you know, here's what you do or here's an example of it, but let's actually practice what this looks like and model it for other people as well, which is hard to do. I mean, we're also talking about things that are extremely hard for all of us than any human being to do. So, you know, back to the original point that you know Patience is important and trust and consistency is also important.
Alexis Reid 1:06:26
I was also gonna, I'm gonna put this out here, and I'm hoping you all will build on it a little bit more. I'm building on what you said about thinking about high schoolers and adolescents, especially, oftentimes, they'll take things very much at face value, like what you see somebody do defines who they are, one in one situation. And I think we as adults actually tend to do that about young people a lot too. So going back and kind of pulling everything you all have been saying together, you know, there's this idea of we as adults need to model cognitive flexibility and a growth mindset also in remembering that these young people are still developing. They don't have the experiences, they don't have the trials and tribulations and challenges that they've gone through, and we need to be able to support that. And you know, Scott, I'm thinking about you and your adolescent psychology class, how you just talk about the fact that, you know, they're still developing, and we expect a lot of them, a lot of times, especially here in the Boston area, right? There's, you know, the bar seems high,
Dr. Scott Seider 1:07:24
yeah. I mean, I agree with that. And I think, I mean, somebody, Shelby, is the perfect person to talk to because she's working on, you know, intellectual risk taking right now, and the importance of, sort of during intellectual risk taking in schools. Because I do think, I think mistake making is, is a hugely important part of learning. And so I don't know, Shelby, I don't know if you want to run with that a little bit, but it just seems I do. I agree with you that, like we, we, you know, in there's many, there's many that the young people probably feel less free to make mistakes than then, then would be ideal?
Dr. Shelby Clark 1:07:57
Yeah, I think, you know, my colleague, Medora, and I are actually working on another book right now that is about intellectual risk taking, specifically and and just the idea that, yeah, we need to sort of get back to maybe some of these core ideas of, like, we need to build belonging first. We need to really focus on that so that people feel safe to take mistakes. We need to really focus on student voice, we need to really focus on these ideas of, you know, confusion is okay and problem solving is okay exploration. So I can't go through all of it right now, but, but just some of those core ideas and again and that, and even using assessment towards mistake making, rather than against it. You know that we actually want to use it for the idea of mistake making, you know, even with, you know, using retests and things like that. So some of those core ideas
Alexis Reid 1:08:54
love it. Let's amplify all of that. And it comes from this, this place of having these strong character traits that allow for you to think about and want to, you know, learn from the process, rather than just the outcome and moving on to the next thing. And all of this is so important, I have a couple other questions, but I'm saving for another time, because I think we touched upon them, but I'll kind of like pull them into one last big question, maybe, is thinking about that, you know, the current space and place that we are in as a society, in a world where we have so much access to so much information that sometimes, especially for young people, it's hard to like filter a lot of it out. I want to think about and ask you both, from everything that you've been doing, what advice would you give to any adults in the lives of young people to be able to maybe focus on a little bit more, be a little bit more intentional with in helping these young people to filter out some of this excess noise so that they can get back to really who they are, what they care most about. And. And how they can feel comfortable and safe to express themselves in those ways. It's a big
Dr. Scott Seider 1:10:05
question. It's a big question. It's a great question, like, and, you know, I mean, it's interesting. I often find that, as a parent myself, that I would be well served to some, some to take some of the, some of the things that I know are good for schools. You know, I should be doing them in my own family. Like I should be sort of taking those lessons and bringing them into my family and so and so, just as an example, if, if, if I feel so clear that like schools benefit from choosing a small number of core values to sort of focus intensively on and to and to really make that the focus of their sort of youth, of their youth development work, you know, you know, it's, you know, it's probably relatively few families and parents that sort of make a decision about like, these are going to be my couple mountains to die on when it comes to nurturing my young. You know, my child's character and you know, and you know, and values, but, but, but I suspect that that that advice would be well served in the family as well, right? And to sort of just, sort of like, choose a few things that you're going to sort of constantly be, sort of be sort of bringing up, like, you know, if you if, if you know, if being kind, for instance, is something that you feel like is, is just essential to who you want your young person to be then, then, like, let's talk about kindness, like, with peers, with grandparents, like with, you know, with, with the the choices we make around your around what we eat, and so on and so forth. Like you and and, and kind of just make, you know, choosing, choosing a couple through lines that that, that that are going to, that are going to, hopefully, you know, I think, like kind of, kind of, you know, by virtue of, sort of their, the having chosen a small number resonate, resonate with your, you know, with your with your children, rather than you, sort of, rather than sort of just being kind of a constant, you know, refrain of all of the things that They could be thinking about at any given
Dr. Shelby Clark 1:12:01
moment. I agree totally with that. Scott, I feel like I'm fighting too many battles on too many fronts oftentimes. So I agree with that. I think I mean, just to sort of the question that you asked, I mean, so much of the work that I do on character, the it always starts with, you have to build belonging first. You have to build trust. You have to build care in the classroom first. I mean, there's a reason that I started the bright ideas chapter on advisory and trust and care. I mean, even though that's where they teach explicitly, that's the space where they have, you know this very like one on one, authentic relationship with their teachers. I just don't feel like I've ever written basically anything about character where I haven't talked about the fact that you have to build relationships and care and trust and have very authentic relationships. And so I, too, am working on this. So I don't, you know, say anything to anybody that this is not, you know, hard in this day and age. But you know, we do need to put down our phones. We do need to, you know, we talk about curiosity tangents in the chapter, and, you know, I need to turn my face to my child and let them tell me about that long story at school that maybe I don't want to always listen to. You know, we need, we need to tune in rather than tune out. So, you know, everything is built upon that authentic relationship. So
Alexis Reid 1:13:29
that's such a great thing to kind of like package this all up in and think about, Okay, one last big question, what's something that you're hopeful for moving forward from each of you,
Dr. Scott Seider 1:13:41
I would say, so, you know, so most of my work, you know, sort of, over the last decade or so, is focused on civic character, kind of, how we how, how we help young how schools and parents can help young people think about their responsibilities to others and and I think we're, I think we're living in A moment. I think we're living in a moment where our where some of our leaders are demonstrating, you know, extraordinary cruelty. You know, they're where they're where they're really explicitly saying, like, we care about some people and not all people. And and I think that's very discouraging. And so I guess I'm, I'm hopeful that that young, that young people you, and I've seen you, and I've and I've had an opportunity around some some some impressive young people in this regard, will will do a lot better. And I think we see, and I think we see that some of the some of the biggest movements, some of the biggest civic movements over the last 20 years have been youth led, like, whether that's, you know, whether that's the parklands, you know, Parkland students, like, sort of pushing for, for, you know, you know, pushing for laws that might prevent, like, sort of, you know, school shootings, environment, you know, folks focusing on the environment focus, folks focusing on racial justice. Like, I think a lot of that, a lot of that work has come from, has sort of originated. Young people and and I think it comes out of a belief that that that all that all people have value, and that we have responsibilities to all people. So so that makes me hopeful.
Alexis Reid 1:15:11
Well, Said,
Dr. Shelby Clark 1:15:12
I would absolutely agree with that. I mean, particularly with the work that I'm doing right now on intellectual risk taking, that we will continue to move towards models of schooling that will allow for more risk taking, and in particular, that will, I think, encourage more curiosity, more confusion and more acknowledgement of intellectual humility. And I think, in that allow for maybe some you know, under maybe more civil discourse and civil engagement, I guess
Gerald Reid 1:15:49
Absolutely. I mean, what do we what do we have if we have no hope? And I think to echo everything that you've been sharing and all the amazing work you've committed your entire professional life to, is that even if you make one decision in a moment that impacts one person's life, you've done something, you know, like, if you can't rely on something or someone else out there to make changes in the world, that you can perhaps make a difference in wherever your environment is, even if it's small and young people can realize that they can make a difference. You know, there's someone being mistreated, go over and check in with them, like something so small, like that makes the world of a difference. As a therapist, believe me, I hear it just going in to check in with someone, which is a great character trait, is a big thing for one person. And even if it's not changing the world, it's changing that experience for that one person.
Alexis Reid 1:16:39
I will put in a plug for you guys, because we talked a lot about, you know, the character compass book as like a tool for schools to learn a little bit how to, you know, improve character development in their schools. But I would argue that it's really great for a lot of families and caregivers or coaches to be reading too. I see a lot of this in my practice where, you know, kids are trying to figure out which schools to go to, whether they're going to high school or college, or what career path to be taking, and these are a lot of questions about understanding ourselves that they've never really sat with or thought about or had anybody ask them to have an opportunity to discuss. So the more we can just know more ourselves to be in a position to offer that to a young person, I think, is such a beautiful thing. And I for one, I can speak for Jerry too. We're so grateful for all the work you both are doing and and the positive energy and vibes that you're you're sharing with the world and showing them what's possible is really beautiful. So we're grateful to have you here today, and also for all the work you you do and continue to do, and the commitment you have to this work. So thank you.
Dr. Scott Seider 1:17:48
Well, thank you very much. You're very, very kind of you and very kind to have us on the on the show.
Dr. Shelby Clark 1:17:53
Yes, thank you so much. Likewise and yeah, thank you so much for having us on the show.
Gerald Reid 1:17:57
Thank you both. Thanks for tuning in to the Reid Connect-ED podcast. Please remember that this is a podcast intended to educate and share ideas, but it is not a substitute for professional care that may be beneficial to you at different points of your life. If you are needed support, please contact your primary care physician, local hospital, educational institution, or support staff at your place of employment to seek out referrals for what may be most helpful for you. ideas shared here have been shaped by many years of training, incredible mentors research theory, evidence based practices and our work with individuals over the years, but it's not intended to represent the opinions of those we work with or who we are affiliated with. The reconnected podcast is hosted by siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid. Original music is written and recorded by Gerald Reid (www.Jerapy.com) recording was done by Cyber Sound Studios. If you want to follow along on this journey with us the Reid Connect-ED podcast. we'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks each season so please subscribe for updates and notifications. Feel free to also follow us on Instagram @ReidConnectEdPodcast that's @ReidconnectEdPodcast and Twitter @ReidconnectEd. We are grateful for you joining us and look forward future episodes. In the meanwhile be curious, be open, and be well.
S8 E2: Character Development w/Dr. Scott Seider and Dr. Shelby Clark
In this episode, Gerald and Alexis spoke with Dr. Scott Seider and Dr. Shelby Clark on the topic of developing character within schools. We dive into the key insights and lessons from their research on the topic, found in their new book: βCharacter Compass, Second Edition: Four Directions for Building Powerful School Culture and Student Success.β
Summary:
How is character and character development defined?
How do schools prioritize certain character traits?
How are character traits developed from a holistic perspective?
How do we engage young people in conversations about character?
Be curious. Be Open. Be well.
The ReidConnect-Ed Podcast is hosted by Siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid, produced by and original music is written and recorded by www.Jerapy.com
*Please note that different practitioners may have different opinions- this is our perspective and is intended to educate you on what may be possible.
