The staff
has been inspired by Michelle Borba, who is the author of Building Moral
Intelligence: Raising Socially Responsible Kids Who Do The Right Thing. We have incorporated some of her philosophy
into our program. She feels like there are seven essential virtues (empathy,
conscience, self-control, respect, kindness, tolerance, and fairness) that kids
must have in order to understand intuitively what the right thing to do is and
to be able to do it. These virtues are learned from active teaching and
modeling by adults early in a child’s life. We talk to children about these
concepts, defining them with the help of the behavior of students and staff and
pointing out the many acts of, for example, kindness that happens here every
day. Many of the books teachers select for story time will demonstrate these
virtues, which will be another opportunity to discuss it with the
children.