Our Lady Star of the Sea will join four other schools in Christchurch and 20,000 other groups worldwide to celebrate World Character Day – 22nd September 2016.

Throughout human history, humans have asked…

“What kind of person am I?”

“And who do I want to be in the world?”

When an Emmy award winning film crew questioned what it would look like to have people across the globe devote an entire day to talking about character, Character Day was born.

· World Character Day 2014 = 1500 schools from 32 countries

· World Character Day 2015 = 6,874 groups from 125 countries

· World Character Day 2016 = Over 20,000 groups have already signed up for the 3rd Character Day

· This September 22nd five schools from the Bays Cluster will be participating in this exciting (and important) global event for the very first time.

· In true Kiwi style students, staff and parents from Mount Pleasant School, Heathcote Valley School, Redcliffs School, Sumner School and Our Lady Star of the Sea School, will gather on Sumner beach – lined up in order to spell out the words “Character Matters” ready for a drone to film and photograph from the air above.

· This ambitious project, involving over one thousand primary aged children, is just one initiative indicating the emphasis these schools are now putting on whole school Character Education.

· Dr Lucy Hone, from the 100% Project, who is working across the five Christchurch schools to co-create and implement a sustainable character and wellbeing education strategy, said “The Bays Cluster schools are thrilled to be part of World Character Day for the first time. Gathering at the beach today gives us the opportunity to join with other schools and organisations from all over the world which are increasingly recognising that developing good character matters. Faced with epidemic levels of depression, stress and anxiety, the need to teach students how to take personal responsibility for their wellbeing is more apparent than ever. Thanks to the new field of positive psychology, which believes that instead of purely focusing on all the things that are wrong with us we need to focus on what goes right, we now have a substantial body of evidence showing the benefits of building character, plus insights as to how we can do this in a school setting. Encouraing schools and parents to focus on what is going well with their kids, the best parts of their self, is important. It feels good to have the best things about ourselves noticed, and it’s all of our job to take those strengths seriously and enable the whole school community to build on those assets. A huge body of research now shows that our characters are malleable, not fixed traits, and that focusing on building character strengths has a lasting impact on wellbeing, academic performance, career success and enhances relationships.”

What is Character Day?

Character Day is a free annual day and global initiative where groups around the world screen films on the science of character development from different perspectives, dive into free printed discussion materials, and join an online global conversation around the importance of developing character strengths (resilience, grit, empathy, courage, kindness) - all rooted in evidence-based research. Character Day is one day. The resources are available year-round. We have signed up our school. You can sign up your organisation, team, family, company or any other group to participate. It's completely free!

See this short video explaining Character Day https://vimeo.com/159254643

And this one explaining why a growing number of schools are seeking to promote wellbeing and character education along side academics.

http://www.letitripple.org/films/science-of-character/

What will happen on Character Day?

Students will join together to make short videos around two important questions:

1. Who do you admire and why?

2. If your character strengths are like super-powers enabling you to be a better version of yourself, how do you want to be?

How does promoting character enhance student wellbeing and success?

“Identifying and developing our individual and shared character strengths promotes good outcomes in so many ways. For example, if we can get students in the habit of asking themselves ‘is what I’m about to do a relection of who I am and who I want to be?’ then those thoughts shape and challenge their every day behaviour. Similarly, using character strengths such as bravery, love of learning, teamwork, perserverance, hope, leadership and social intelligence – explicitly teaching them about these strengths through literature, history, maths and via drama, music and sports too – helps students grasp a greater understanding of the processes required for their growth and learning. Teaching kids about the range of character strengths available to them gives them new tools to use when faced with every day life stresses and bigger challenges too. As we all know, schools have to prepare kids for a very different future now, one in which these skills are every bit as important as learning academic content”, adds Dr Hone.

Contact:

Dr Lucy Hone, NZ rep for the International Positive Education Network & research associate at the Human Potential Centre (AUT)

Mobile: 021 635 527

Email: lucyhone@xtra.co.nz

FB: 100percentproject