What we're Doing...Really

In my scanning the World Wide Web recently, I came across an article written by a small-town middle school principal - explaining the character education program currently operating in his school.
I was struck by the articulation of three major goals toward the end of his article: that students would "understand, care about, and act upon core ethical values." There is obviously a sequence here that this principal is highlighting, and I was struck by how it lines up with Character First!'s ideas of Emphasize, Require, and Recognize.
Like this principal, we need to see the necessity of helping people to think clearly about what character is before we can try to inspire them to it; and inspiring them before we make a big deal out of whether they're doing it or not.
What we're doing, really, at Character First!, is helping to get people talking and thinking about character. Once that is happening, the door is open for the right discussions to bear fruit.