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The Road to DIgnity - Kindness

As part of RHA’s Character Education program, students from all grades are exploring lifelong character development through a guided journey called “The Road to Dignity”. In September, kindness and empathy are the first milestones. Students are thinking about how they can demonstrate kindness and empathy to each other, at the start of a new school year with many new faces.

Each student from Grades 1-5 has a journal with monthly themes, goals and reflections. The first activity is committing to five goals that will lead to outcomes of kindness to others.

Conversations are layered throughout the school day with stories, library time, discussion, playground and classroom interactions. Children at RHA are always working on character. Shayla Morrison, Director of Student Life and Academic Affairs likens the Road to Dignity to ‘driving towards’ particular character traits throughout the year. She says, “the lights are always on, but the headlights are on one topic for 5-6 weeks where we really focus on that specific goal or trait.” Part of the learning process around character education are strategies that can help in different situations where children encounter emotional reactions to certain situations. RHA has a stop-light system to remind students of a simple system of “STOP, THINK, GO”. Students start by developing a ‘noticing’ skill – to stop, and realize that they have an emotion coming into play that may be informed by ingrained, negative patterns or thoughts. Once they can pause to consider the story around this reaction, they can choose to retrain their minds to tell a more positive story with some positive decisions around those thoughts. Only then do they learn to “go”. Once they are ready to act positively with their character tool and behaviours, they are ready to act with better informed thinking patterns.

The end of each cycle is a reflection where students look back on their goals to see whether they were met, and identify ways to keep refining these important personal development goals to continue ahead without roadblocks along the Road to Dignity.
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