Catholic schools begin new character education program

The Diocese of Buffalo has launched a new Character Education program this fall to educate and celebrate one virtue each month across all Catholic schools. As author Jessica Lahey says, “Character is the ‘X factor’ that experts in parenting and education have deemed integral to success.” Read her article here.

Our parents are looking to identify that value proposition which sets our Catholic schools apart. By focusing on one virtue each month, we hope to explicitly focus on character and result in better-behaved, virtuous children who will create a better world. Especially coming off the last few years of the Covid-19 pandemic with periodic remote learning, students need to be connected and some need to re-learn how to behave correctly.

The first month, “Welcoming” is the virtue for September. The Department of Catholic Schools created a video to teach a few lessons and distributed it to the schools, who were asked to introduce the video on the classroom level and introduce lessons. Then each school will be asked to nominate one student to be honored.

The second month’s focus is on sportsmanship which we hope will permeate all of our activities. As we move through the year, each month will roll out a new virtue as we seek to instill character education as an integral part of our Catholic schools.